xt morning Jerome arose at dawn, and crept down-stairs
noiselessly on his bare feet, that he might not awake his mother.
However, still as he was, he had hardly crossed the threshold of the
kitchen before his mother called to him from her bedroom, the door of
which stood open.

"Who's that?" called Ann Edwards, in a strained voice; and Jerome
knew that she had a wild hope that it was his father's step she heard
instead of his. The boy caught his breath, hesitating a second, and
his mother called again: "Who's that? Who's that out in the kitchen?"

"It's only me," answered Jerome, with that most pitiful of apologies
in his tone--the apology for presence and very existence in the stead
of one more beloved.

His mother drew a great shuddering sigh. "Come in here," she called
out, harshly, and Jerome went into the bedroom and stood beside her
bed. The curtain was not drawn over the one window, and the little
homely interior was full of the pale dusk of dawn. This had been Ann
Edwards's bridal chamber, and her children had been born there. The
face of that little poor room was as familiar to Jerome as the face
of his mother. From his earliest memory the high bureau had stood
against the west wall, near the window, and a little round table,
with a white towel and a rosewood box on it, in the corner at the
head of the great high-posted bedstead, which filled the rest of the
room, with scant passageway at the foot and one side. Ann's little
body scarcely raised the patchwork quilt on the bed; her face, sunken
in the feather pillows, looked small and weazened as a sick child's
in the dim light. She reached out one little bony hand, clutched
Jerome's poor jacket, and pulled him close. "What's goin' to be
done?" she demanded, querulously. "What's goin' to be done? Do you
know what's goin' to be done, Jerome Edwards?"

The boy stared at her, and her sharply questioning eyes struck him
dumb.

Ann Edwards had always been the dominant spirit in her own household.
The fact that she was so, largely on masculine sufferance, had never
been fully recognized by herself or others. Now, for the first time,
the stratum of feminine dependence and helplessness, which had
underlain all her energetic assertion, was made manifest, and poor
little Jerome was spurred out of his boyhood into manhood to meet
this new demand.

"What's goin' to be done?" his mother cried again. "Why don't you
speak, Jerome Edwards?"

Then Jerome drew himself up