hat time Peter Junior will think that he can go, too. He's
so funny!" She laughed self-consciously, and carried the gingham
aprons back to her room.

"Bless her dear little heart." Mary Ballard understood.

Peter Junior also profited by the rainy morning. He had a long hour
alone with his mother to tell her of his wish to go to Paris; and her
way of receiving his news was a surprise to him. He had thought it
would be a struggle and that he would have to argue with her, setting
forth his hopes and plans, bringing her slowly to think with
quiescence of their long separation: but no. She rose and began to
pace the floor, and her eyes grew bright with eagerness.

"Oh, Peter, Peter!" She came and placed her two hands on his shoulders
and gazed into his eyes. "Peter Junior, you are a boy after my own
heart. You are going to be something worth while. I always knew you
would. It is Bertrand Ballard who has waked you up, who has taught you
to see that there is much outside of Leauvite for a man to do. I'm not
objecting to those who live here and have found their work here; it is
only that you are different. Go! Go!--It is--has your father--have you
asked his consent?"

"Oh, yes."

"Has he given it?"

"I think he is considering it seriously."

"Peter Junior, I hope you won't go without it--as you went once,
without mine." Never before had she mentioned it to him, or recalled
to his mind that terrible parting.

"Why not, mother? It would be as fair to him now as it was then to
you. It would be fairer; for this is a question of progress, and then
it was a matter of life and death."

"Ah, that was different, I admit. But I never could retaliate, or seem
to, even in the smallest thing. I don't want him to suffer as I
suffered."

It was almost a cry for pity, and Peter Junior wondered in his heart
at the depth of anguish she must have endured in those days, when he
had thrust the thought of her opposition to one side as merely an
obstacle overcome, and had felt the triumph of winning out in the
contest, as one step toward independent manhood. Now, indeed, their
viewpoints had changed. He felt almost a sense of pique that she had
yielded so joyously and so suddenly, although confronted with the
prospect of a long separation from him. Did she love him less than in
the past? Had his former disregard of her wishes lessened even a
trifle her mother love for him?

"I'm glad you can take the thought of my going as you do, moth