boy, Paw?"

"Oh, what's the use of arguin' with a woman! I love you for it, Maw,
but--well, I'm sorry I spoke."

He returned to his paper, growling now and then as he read of some new
quibble devised by the attorneys for the defense. As softly and as
surreptitiously as it begins to rain on a cloudy day, she was crying. He
turned again with mock indignation.

"Here, here! What you turning up about now?"

"I want to see my boy. I'm worried. He may be sick. He'd never let us
know."

The old man tried to cajole her from her forebodings, tried to reason
them away, laugh them away. At last he said, with a poor effort at
gruffness:

"Well, for the Lord's sake, why don't you go? He's always askin' us to
come and see him. I'm kind o' homesick for a sight of the boy m'self.
You haven't been to town for a month of Sundays. Throw a few things in a
valise and I'll hitch up. We'll just about make the next train from the
village."

She needed no coercion from without. She rose at once. As she opened the
squeaky screen-door he was clumping down the steps. He paused to call
back:

"Oh, Maw!"

"Yes, Paw!"

"Better tuck in a jar of those preserves you been puttin' up. The boy
always liked those better 'n most anything. Don't wrap 'em in my
nightshirt, though."

She called out, "All right," and the slap of the screen-door was echoed
a moment later by a similar sound in the barn, accompanied by the old
man's voice:

"Give over, Fan."

II

The elevator-boy hesitated. "Oh, yes-sum, I got a pass-key, all right,
but I can't hahdly let nobody in Mista Coburn's 'pahtment 'thout his
awdas."

"But we're his mother and father."

"Of co'se I take yo' wud for that, ma'am, but, you see, I can't hahdly
let nobody--er--um'm--thank you, sir--well, I reckon Mista Coburn might
be mo' put out ef I didn't let you-all in than ef I did."

The elevator soared silently to the eighth floor, and there all three
debarked. The boy was so much impressed with the tip the old man had
slipped him that he unlocked the door, put the hand-baggage into the
room, snapped the switch that threw on all the lights, and said, "Thank
you, sir," again as he closed the door.

Paw opened it to give the boy another coin and say: "Don't you let on
that we're here. It's a surprise."

The boy, grinning, promised and descended, like an imp through a trap.

The old couple stood stock-still, hesitating to advance. So many
feelings, such varied timidities, urge