Will you come now?"

"Of course." She followed him into the house and up the long, shabbily
carpeted stairs. She had never seen a dying person and she began to
shiver.

As if he read her thought the doctor spoke. "Isn't going to die while
you're here. Not for a week--perhaps two weeks. But he'll never be up
again." His voice was gruff and his brow was furrowed. He had been with
Jeanie King when Jimsy was born and when she died, and he had cherished
and scorned James King for long years.

There was a chair beside the bed and Honor seated herself there in
silence. Presently the sick man opened his eyes and his worn and ravaged
look of his son caught at her heart.

"So," he said somberly, "you came home."

"Yes, Mr. King. I came because Jimsy was in trouble, and to-morrow I'm
going to him."

His eyes widened and slow, difficult color came into his sharply boned
face. "You're going ... to Mexico?"

"Yes; alone."

The color crept up and up until it reached the graying hair, crisply
waved, like Jimsy's. "No King woman ever ... held harder ... than that!"
he gasped. "You're a good girl, Honor Carmody. They knew ... what to ...
name you, didn't they?"

She leaned nearer, holding her hand so that the rays of the night light
fell on the ring. "Didn't you know I'd 'hold hard' when you let Jimsy
give me this?"

He hauled himself up on an elbow and stared at it with tragic eyes.
"Jeanie wore it five years.... My mother wore it thirty.... Honor
Carmody, you're a good girl.... You make me ... ashamed.... Tell the boy
that ... I'm sorry ... that letter. Bring him back ... in time...." He
fell back, limp, gasping, and the doctor signaled to the girl to go. As
she was slipping through the door the sick man spoke again, querulously.
"Damn that mocking-bird ... make somebody shoot him!... There was one
singing when Jimsy was born ... and when Jeanie went ... and this one
now, mocking, mocking...."

She ran back to him. "Oh, Mr. King," she said, with shy fervor, "he
isn't making fun of _us_!--Only of the bad, hard things! One sang out
near Fiesta Park the day we thought Greenmount would win the
championship, and one was singing the night Jimsy and I found out that
we loved each other,--and this one was singing when I came home to-day!"
It was a long speech for Honor and she was a little shy and breathless.
"I _know_ he doesn't mean it the way you think! He's telling us that
the sad, hard, terrible things are not the real thi