m and take care of him. Oh, Mary--Mary--" he cried
from his bewildered heart. "Be with us, Mary, and show us what to do!"

Grant rose, went into the house, bundled up Kenyon and between showers
carried him and walked with him through the bleak woods of March, where
the red bird's joyous song only cut into his heart and made the young
man press closer to him the little form that snuggled in his arms.

At night Jasper went to his room above the kitchen and the father turned
to his lonely bed. In the cold parlor Mary Adams lay. Grant sat in the
kitchen by the stove, pressing to his face his mother's apron, only
three days before left hanging by her own hands on the kitchen door. He
clung to this last touch of her fingers, through the long night, and as
he sat there his heart filled with a blind, vague, rather impotent
purpose to take his mother's place with Kenyon. From time to time he
rose to put wood in the stove, but always when he went back to his
chair, and stroked the apron with his face, the baby seemed to be
clinging to him. The thought of the little hands forever tugging at her
apron racked him with sobs long after his tears were gone.

And so as responsibility rose in him he stepped across the border from
youth to manhood.

They made him dress in his Sunday best the next morning and he was still
so close to that borderland of boyhood that he was standing about the
yard near the gate, looking rather lost and awkward when the Nesbits
drove up with Kenyon, whom they had taken for the night. When the others
had gone into the house the Doctor asked:

"Did she come, Grant?"

The youth lifted his face to the Doctor and looked him squarely in the
eye as man to man and answered sharply, "No."

The Doctor cocked one eye reflectively and said slowly, "So--" and drove
away.

It was nearly dusk when the Adamses came back from the cemetery to the
empty house. But a bright fire was burning in the kitchen stove and the
kettle was boiling and the odor of food cooking in the oven was in the
air. Kenyon was moving fitfully about the front room. Mrs. Dexter was
quietly setting the table. Amos Adams hung up his hat, took off his
coat, and went to his rocker by the kitchen door; Jasper sat stiffly in
the front room. Grant met Mrs. Dexter in the dining room, and she saw
that the child had hold of the young man's finger and she heard the baby
calling, "Mother--mother! Grant, I want mother!" with a plaintive little
cry, over and