and Martha Foote knew what she
meant. "I can't hold 'em any more. I work as hard as ever--harder.
That's it. It seems the harder I work the colder they get. Last week, in
Indianapolis, they couldn't have been more indifferent if I'd been the
educational film that closes the show. And, oh my God! They sit and
knit."

"Knit!" echoed Martha Foote. "But everybody's knitting nowadays."

"Not when I'm on. They can't. But they do. There were three of them in
the third row yesterday afternoon. One of 'em was doing a grey sock with
four shiny needles. Four! I couldn't keep my eyes off of them. And the
second was doing a sweater, and the third a helmet. I could tell by
the shape. And you can't be funny, can you, when you're hypnotised by
three stony-faced females all doubled up over a bunch of olive-drab?
Olive-drab! I'm scared of it. It sticks out all over the house. Last
night there were two young kids in uniform right down in the first row,
centre, right. I'll bet the oldest wasn't twenty-three. There they sat,
looking up at me with their baby faces. That's all they are. Kids. The
house seems to be peppered with 'em. You wouldn't think olive-drab could
stick out the way it does. I can see it farther than red. I can see it
day and night. I can't seem to see anything else. I can't--"

Her head came down on her arms, that rested on her tight-hugged knees.

"Somebody of yours in it?" Martha Foote asked, quietly. She waited. Then
she made a wild guess--an intuitive guess. "Son?"

"How did you know?" Geisha McCoy's head came up.

"I didn't."

"Well, you're right. There aren't fifty people in the world, outside my
own friends, who know I've got a grown-up son. It's bad business to have
them think you're middle-aged. And besides, there's nothing of the stage
about Fred. He's one of those square-jawed kids that are just cut out to
be engineers. Third year at Boston Tech."

"Is he still there, then?"

"There! He's in France, that's where he is. Somewhere--in France. And
I've worked for twenty-two years with everything in me just set, like an
alarm-clock, for the time when that kid would step off on his own. He
always hated to take money from me, and I loved him for it. I never went
on that I didn't think of him. I never came off with a half dozen
encores that I didn't wish he could hear it. Why, when I played a
college town it used to be a riot, because I loved every fresh-faced boy
in the house, and they knew it. And now--and