be more clever than
mothers, but nobody else _cares_ enough, always, always to try to
understand!")

"I thought I'd come up and walk back with you," she offered.

"I haven't got very many," said Paul, abashed, looking down at the few,
blue, bloom-covered balls in the bottom of his shining tin pail. "I was
trying to hurry up and get enough for supper, anyhow."

Marise in spite of herself, moved by pity for his confusion, offered him
a way out. It always seemed to her too dreadful for anyone not to have a
way out, even if it implied a fib. "Weren't there very many on the
bushes?" she asked.

But he refused it with a characteristic integrity. "Oh yes, there were
lots there," he said.

A silence fell. The little dog, sensitively aware of something wrong,
whined uneasily, and pawed at Paul's hand. But Paul did not look down at
him. He stood, his bare feet wide apart, the empty pail in his hand,
looking down the beautiful green slope of the pasture, golden now in the
long rays from the sun poised low on the line of the mountains opposite.

Marise looked at him, seeing nothing in all the world but that tanned,
freckled, anxious little face. With what an utter unexpectedness did
these moments of crisis spring on you; something vital there, and no
warning, no chance to think.

"Anything the matter, Paul?" she said gently.

He nodded, silent.

"Anything you can tell Mother?" she asked, still more gently.

Paul said gruffly, "I don't know: it's about Ralph Powers. He was up
here this afternoon." He looked down at his brown, bramble-scratched
legs.

Marise's imagination gave an unbridled leap of fear. She had always felt
something strange and abnormal about Ralph. But she thought, "I mustn't
tyrannize over Paul, even by a too-waiting expectant silence," and
stooped over with the pretext of tying her shoe. A lump came to her
throat. How terribly, helplessly, you _cared_ about what came to your
children!

When she lifted her head, Paul had come nearer her and was looking down
at her, with troubled eyes. "Say, Mother, he didn't _say_ not to tell
you. Do you suppose it would be fair?"

She made a great effort at loyalty and said, "I can't tell, Paul. You
saw him. You know better than I, if you think he meant you not to tell.
Try to remember if he said anything about it."

Paul thought hard. "You wouldn't tell anybody?" he asked.

"Not if you don't want me to," she answered.

Paul sat down by her and drew a long bre