"We'll all catch it, if we can," his mother said emphatically.
"Is that all, Mother?" he asked her gently.
"All?" she was puzzled.
"All you want of me?"
"Oh! Yes, dear," she said brightly.
"Then I believe I'll go and lie down again. I'm jolly tired and jolly weak."
"Yes—do," Florence said.
But at the door he turned back and came to her and took her in his arms.
"God bless you, Mother!" he whispered with his lips against her hair.
"God bless my boy!" she answered brokenly.
Then he kissed her passionately, and turned away sobbing.
"Wait a moment," she said when he had smothered back his emotion and had put his hand again on the door. "I did forget one thing. Make no explanation—not to any one."
"What about the governor?"
"Least of all to him. Your father will ask you not another question; he has promised me."
"I say, Mother," Basil said, flushing painfully, "you are a bit of a brick—aren't you?"
"I am your mother, Basil," she returned, smiling into his eyes. "Remember, not one word to any human creature. Promise me. Let it rest where it is forever—just with us."
And there they left it—glad to be rid of it, as far as words went, but knowing that, waking or sleeping, neither could ever be rid of it in thought again. It was a poison cooked into their blood.
For years they did not speak of it again, except that
