had rushed to Old Chester in June
to open the house, she was met by the information that he was going off
for the summer on a geological expedition.

Mary's disappointment made her feel a little sick. "What _shall_ I do
without you!"

"Oh, if Aunty can do without me, I guess outsiders can," said Johnny,
with clumsy amiability.

"We'll be here when you get back in September," she said.

He yawned, and said, "All right." Then he strolled off, and she went
upstairs and cried.

Johnny, walking home after this embarrassing interview, striking at the
roadside brambles with a switch and whistling loudly, said to himself:
"How on earth did Mr. Robertson fall in love with her? _He's_ got
brains." A day or two later he went off for his geological summer,
leaving in his mother's heart that rankling word, "outsiders." As the
weeks dragged along and she counted the days until he would be back, she
brooded and brooded over it. It festered so deeply that she could not
speak of it to Johnny's father. But once she said: "He's ungrateful! See
all we've done for him!"--and Carl realized that bitterness toward Miss
Lydia, who had "robbed" her, was extending to the boy himself. And
again--it was in August, and Johnny was to be at home in a
fortnight--she said, "He ought to be _made_ to come to us!"

Her husband looked at her in surprise. "You can't 'make' anybody love
you, Mary. We are just outsiders to him."

She cried out so sharply that he was frightened, not knowing that he had
turned a dagger-word in the wound.

Perhaps it was the intolerable pain of knowing that she was helpless
that drove her one day, without Carl's knowledge, to the rectory. "I'll
put it to Doctor Lavendar as--as somebody else's story--the trouble of a
'friend,' and maybe he can tell me how I can make Johnny feel that we
are _not_ outsiders! Oh, he owes it to us to do what we want! I'll tell
Doctor Lavendar that the father and mother lived out West and are
friends of mine. . . . He'll never put two and two together."

She walked past the rectory twice before she could get her courage to
the point of knocking. When she did, it was Willy King who opened the
door.

"Oh--is Doctor Lavendar ill?" she said. And Doctor King answered, dryly,
that when you are eighty-two you are not particularly well.

"I thought I'd just drop in and ask his advice on something--nothing
important," said Johnny's mother, breathlessly. "I'll go away, and come
some other time."