weight. So it came ultimately to some muttered words of farewell, a snatch at his bag, and brusque departure.
Keppel's mother came in softly and laid her hand on his head; he had flung himself prone upon his bed.
"Richie, what is it?" she asked, gently.
"What is what, mother?" he parried, listlessly.
"Isn't home good to you?" she went on.
"Home—is home, mother dear, always." He smiled at her wistfully.
"You didn't used to have the lines about your mouth, boy, or the tired eyes?"
"I didn't used to be thirty-two years old, madam," he laughed in a gay attempt.
"I'm sorry Frances couldn't come." Keppel had helplessly felt the moment coming.
"Yes, I knew you would be."
They sat silent, the shrewd eyes of his mother on him compassionately.
"Richie?"
"Yes?"
"Well?"
"Well?"
"I'm waiting."
He put his hand on hers with a pat of reassurance.
"You'd not understand," he evaded.
"I do not know that I want to—understand," she returned, with a straight glance at him. Keppel looked at her, wonderingly.
What she said next made him catch his breath.
"You shouldn't have left her,"—that was all.
"But you don't understand," he repeated, irritably.
"You should have stayed with her, Richie," she went on firmly.
"But—"
"She's everything now, my son, and we—your father, the girls, and I—we are—are not your first thought. Frances didn't marry us; she married you. Richie, she loves you, and that's all that counts."
Keppel was strangely humbled, speechless; he had never seen his mother so. It was as if knowing none of it, she yet apprehended all. The instant was a little awesome.
She continued: "Remember, remember that you can't bring everything right in six months. Why, Richard, your father and I struggled for almost two years before we found out the truth of what we were destined to be to each other."
Keppel bent to kiss her.
"Be kind with her, my boy. Tell me nothing about what has happened, if anything has,—I don't want to hear it. Only always be gentle with her. She'll understand you some day. It's just you she wants now—not us."
She rose, tying the strings of her apron with nervous fingers. That she let the tears come into her eyes, and taking both his hands kissed him, was to her son wonderful. She was not a woman who made a light show of tenderness.
"Oh, Richie boy, mother's sorry," she cried, jealously, as if he were her boy again.
"Mother, you're splendid," he said, after a moment, brokenly. "If she only knew—"
"Hush, Richard."
She put her hand on his arm with an earnest gesture. "There's the noon train, you know. It'll take you back to New York by nine o'clock to-night."
He understood. "But the others?"
"I'll explain. Slip out quietly when you're ready and I'll have John harness old Kit for you. You can leave her at the station—and you know it's hard for me to let you go?"
Keppel nodded. "I want to go back, mother."
"Dick! Dick!" called his sisters, impatiently.
"Be still," his mother cried, softly, coming out to them. "Can't I have my own son to myself just once a year?"
The train from New York pulled in just as Keppel drove up to the little wooden box of a station. His own train was not due for a matter of five minutes; so he waited in the sleigh, idly watching.
She was the only one to alight at the dreary snow-bound spot—tall, fur-wrapped, and shrinking, she turned helplessly around and looked full into his eyes.
"Frances!"
"Dick, I had to come," she sobbed into his coat. "I wanted you so."
