"Women are queer," Johnny's father ruminated. "I should think you'd like
to see him. I guess all this mother-love talk is a fairy tale"; then,
before she could retort, he put his arms around her. "I didn't mean it,
dear! Forgive me. Only, Mary, I get to thinking about him, and I feel as
if I'd like to see the little beggar!"

"But how can I 'love' him?" she defended herself, in a smothered voice;
"I don't know him."

"Stop and speak to him while you're at your father's," he urged; "and
then you will know him."

"Oh, I couldn't--I couldn't! I'd be afraid to."

"But why? Nobody could possibly suppose--"

"Because," she said, "if I saw him once _I might want to see him
again_."

Carl frowned with bewilderment, but Johnny's mother began to pace up and
down, back and forth--then suddenly flew out of the room and upstairs,
to fall, crying, upon her bed.

However, she obeyed Doctor King's summons. The day the stage went
jogging and creaking past Miss Lydia's door the lady inside looked
straight ahead of her, and some one who saw her said she was very
pale--"anxious about her father," Old Chester said, sympathetically.
Then Old Chester wondered whether Carl was so unchristian as to refuse
to come and see his father-in-law--"on his deathbed!"--or whether old
Mr. Smith "on his death bed" was so unchristian as to refuse to see his
son-in-law. "What _did_ they quarrel about!" Old Chester said.
"Certainly Mr. Smith seemed friendly enough to the young man before
Mary married him."

[Illustration: "IF I SAW HIM ONCE I MIGHT WANT TO SEE HIM AGAIN"]

When Mary--she was in the early thirties now, and Johnny was
thirteen--came into her father's room and sat down beside him, the old
man opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Pleasant journey?" he said, thickly.

"Yes, father. I hope you are feeling better?"

His eyes closed and he seemed to forget her. Later, looking up at her
from the pillows of his great carved rosewood bed--the headboard looked
like the Gothic doors of a cathedral--he said, "Tell your husband"--he
lifted his upper lip and showed his teeth--"to educate him."

Mary said, "Who?"--then could have bitten her tongue out, for of course
there was only one "him" for these three people! She gave a frightened
glance about the room, but there was no one to hear that betraying
pronoun. She said, faintly: "Yes, father. Now try to rest and don't
talk. You'll feel better in the morning."

"He hates a coward as much as