h! You'd take me into the parks, and down to
the beach, wouldn't you, Moth'?"

"Oh, Teddy, my little son! I'd try to make a life for you, dear!"

"And WE'D be our family, just you and me!" he said uncertainly.

"We'd be a family, all by ourselves," she promised him, laughing and
crying. And she clung to him hungrily, kissing the smooth little
forehead under the rich tumble of hair, her tears falling on his face.
Ah, this was hers, this belonged to her alone, out of all the world.
"I'm glad you told me how you felt about this, Teddy," she said. "It
makes it all clearer to me. You and I, dear--that's the only real life
for us. I owe you that. I promise you, we'll never be separated while
Mother can help it."

His wet little face was pressed against hers.

"And you'll NEVER talk about it any more!" he said violently. "Because
I cry about it sometimes, at night--"

"Never again, my own son!" He lay back on his pillow with a breath of
relief, but she kept her arms about him.

"Because you don't know how a boy feels about his own mother!" he
assured her. Kneeling there, Martie wondered how she had come to forget
his rights, forget his point of view for so long! He would always seem
a baby to her, but he was a person now, and he had his part in, and his
influence upon, her life. Suppose she had left him to cry out this
secret hunger of his uncomforted; suppose, while she thought him
contentedly playing with Billy and 'Lizabeth, he had been judging and
blaming his mother?

While she knelt, thinking, he went to sleep. But Lydia wondered what
was keeping Martie awake. The light in Martie's room was turned up, and
fell in a yellow oblong across the gravel; Lydia dozed and awakened,
but the light was always there.

Morning broke softly in a fog which did not lift as the hours went by.
Malcolm was at home until after lunch, to which meal Teddy and Martie
came downstairs unusually well dressed, Martie observing that she had
errands down town. Teddy kissed Grandpa good-bye as usual, and his
mother kissed Grandpa, too, which was not quite usual, and clung with
her white hands to his lapel.

"Teddy and I have shopping to do down town, Pa, and I've written Cliff
a note!" she said. Her father brightened.

"I'm glad you're inclined to act sensibly, my dear!" he said,
departing. "I thought we'd hear a different story this morning!"

"What are you going down town for?" asked Lydia. "I ought to have some
rubber rings from Mallo