boy go?" said Lady Mary, weeping. "I had thought, when
he was leaving me, perhaps for ever, that--that his heart would be
touched--that I should get a glimpse once more of the Peter he used to
be. Oh, can't you understand? He--he's a little--hard and cold to me
sometimes--God forgive me for saying so!--but you--you've been a young
man too."

"Yes," John said, rather sadly, "I've been young too."

"It's only his age, you know," she said. "He couldn't always be as
gentle and loving as when he was a child. A young man would think that
so babyish. He wants, as he says, to be independent, and not tied to a
woman's apron-string. But in his heart of hearts he loves me best in
the whole world, and he wouldn't have been ashamed to let me see it
at such a moment. And I should have had a precious memory of him for
ever. You shake your head. Don't you understand me? I thought you
seemed to understand," she said wistfully.

"Peter is a boy," said John, "and life is just opening for him. It is
a hard saying to _you_, but his thoughts are full of the world he
is entering. There is no room in them just now for the home he is
leaving. That is human nature. If he be sick or sorry later on--as I
know your loving fancy pictures him--his heart would turn even then,
not to the mother he saw waving and weeping on the quay, amid all the
confusion of departure, but to the mother of his childhood, of his
happy days of long ago. It may be "--John hesitated, and spoke very
tenderly--"it may be that his heart will be all the softer then,
because he was denied the parting interview he never sought. The young
are strangely wayward and impatient. They regret what might have been.
They do not, like the old, dwell fondly upon what the gods actually
granted them. It is _you_ who will suffer from this sacrifice, not
Peter; that will be some consolation to you, I suppose, even if it be
also a disappointment."

"Ah, how you understand!" said Peter's mother, sadly.

"Perhaps because, as you said just now, I have been a young man too,"
he said, forcing a smile. "Oh, forgive me, but let me save you; for I
believe that if you deserted your husband to-day, you would sorrow for
it to the end of your life."

"And Peter--" she murmured.

He came to her side, and straightened himself, and spoke hopefully.

"Give me your last words and your last gifts--and a letter--for Peter,
and send me in your stead to-night. I will deliver them faithfully. I
will tell