Puppy Love

by Inez Haynes Irwin

 

Puppy Love

By INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE
Author of "The Lost Children," "Phoebe and the Heart of Toil," Etc.

With Illustrations by R. F. Schabelitz

At a half after nine, Monday morning, Ernest Martin was just Ernest Martin. At twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds to ten, Monday morning, Ernest Martin was Ernest Martin plus X. The X represents a state of mind. Answer—Ernest was sixteen, and for the first time in his life he had seen a girl when he looked at her.

Ernest did not like girls. He had often wondered why Providence had seen fit to encumber an otherwise perfect world with these obstacles to masculine fun. Thitherto, they had borne the same relative importance to his life as a cloud of gnats to his summer vacation. Almost it was as if, by some peculiar visual limitation, he were blind to the whole sex. Figuratively speaking, he never noticed their existence until he bumped into them. But though, thus far, he had held himself absolutely aloof from contamination, he did not underrate their power. He had seen other boys dally with the enemy, weaken, go over utterly to them. Nothing could express his contempt for these renegades. Tug Warburton, for instance—Tug had never been the same boy since he developed a "case" on Ernest's sister, Phoebe. Ernest admitted alleviating circumstances there, however. Though a girl, Phoebe was almost human. She skated, golfed, boxed. She swam like a duck. She was a crackerjack at tennis.

At the auspicious instant of the fatal day, the door of the sophomore room of the Maywood High School opened and Old Mudguards, the master, entered. Anticipating personal trouble, Ernest furtively searched Mr. Ballington's face. No shadow lay there. On the contrary, it seemed to beam. It even wore a foolish smile between its hedges of iron-gray side-whiskers. Ernest's gaze slid contemptuously past the smile to—what followed in its wake. And then was when he got it!

It was a girl—a tall, pale, dark girl, dressed in slim black. Eyes, it had—a mouth, a nose. But what Ernest saw first, what he saw last, what he remembered to the end of his days were curls—curls that gathered in tangly, grape-like clusters on the little head, curls that meandered off singly and hung, delicately carved spirals of jet against white flesh, curls that poured over the temples, curls that flooded the ears, curls that burst out of the red ribbon on the neck and hung to the waist—everywhere, rivulets, cascades and cataracts of big, round, shining, purple-black curls.

Ernest's eyes filmed. His whole system melted. His ear-drums sizzled so loudly that he did not hear the preliminaries to that heavenly arrangement by which the curls were placed in a seat in front of him.

From that coign of vantage she surveyed her classmates. As long as she was engaged with the front of the class, Ernest's gaze adhered as closely to her as if it had been glued. But suddenly the big black eyes darted up a whole row and pounced on Ernest.

It was like having a pair of burning-glasses trained on him.

Ernest's look sank like a plummet to his book. To his amazement, the type began to perform an intricate fancy dance. He fried in a blush that worked inward as well as outward. A clammy perspiration broke out all over him. His shoulders twitched and he seemed to have no control over his mouth. He had never before known a sensation that was rapture and agony in equal parts. But the most perplexing part of it was that he liked it more than he loathed it.

"Did you see the new girl to-day, Ern?" Phoebe asked that night.

On the instant Ernest developed a depth of diplomacy positively Macchiavellian.

"What new girl?" he asked cunningly.

And then was when he got it

"Oh, Ern!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Haven't you a pair of eyes anywhere in your system? A new girl came into your class to-day. She's Mrs. Wiider's niece, and she's come from Akron, New Hampshire. Her name's Fay Faxon."

Fay Faxon! Surely some poet had invented that marvel of alliteration. Mentally he said it over and over. It was honey on his tongue.

"What did she look like, Phoeb'?" he went on with a meretricious appearance of calm.

"She's a brunette—jet-black eyes—the biggest eyes I ever saw——"

Ernest approved.

"—and jet-black hair—curly—I never saw so many curls in my life."

Ernest approved.

"There's something about her I don't just quite like though—she seemed kind of bold to me."

Ernest stiffened. Bold! That celestial creature bold! Fay bold! To him the primordial diffidence hung upon her—she walked veiled in the shyness of the first of created women.

"It's awfully strange about this Fay Faxon." Phoebe turned to her mother for sympathy with this woman-problem. "She's too queer-looking to be exactly pretty, and yet when she's around you can't help looking at her."

Not exactly pretty! Ernest boiled. Well, that was all a girl knew about it anyway. He recalled that he never had agreed with Phoebe in the matter of beauty. In fact, he had never before seen a girl whom he could honestly call good-looking. Something was always wrong. They had buck teeth or fuzzy hair, or their eyes were too near together. In the past he had thought Phoebe rather pretty. Now he realized that there were salient faults in his sister's face.

"Mother, did you say you'd like to get a new suit for me?" he asked in an off-hand way a little later. "I'd just as lieves go into Boston Saturday as not. Might as well get it over with."

"It's about time." Phoebe's tone was final. "I sha'n't speak to you when I meet you on the street, Ern Martin, if you wear that old suit much longer. If I was out walking with that new girl, for instance, I'd be ashamed to say you were my brother."

Ordinarily a single remark from Phoebe about Ernest's clothes was good for a wrangle stretching from dinner to bedtime. But to Mrs. Martin's astonishment the gage, thus thrown down, was not picked up, was not even noticed.

"We'll go in Saturday, Ernie," she said hastily, before hostilities could begin. "It won't take much more than a morning."

They went into Boston early Saturday morning, but they did not return until Saturday night.

"I bought Ernie a whole new outfit to-day, Edward," Mrs. Martin said to Mr. Martin after dinner. "It took us all day. I never saw Ernie so trying before. He fussed all the way in on the train because we hadn't an automobile. Said we could have got there in no time with our own machine. But you remember, Edward Martin, that you are not to buy an automobile for that boy, no matter how he teases you."

"Just as you say, mother," Mr. Martin answered, "although we could afford a runabout this year."

The Martins kept a horse and carriage. Every evening in mild weather Mr. and Mrs. Martin went out to drive. Time had been when the children fought for the chance of accompanying their parents in the rubber-tired, easy-moving vehicle. But now they scorned it. Nevertheless, Mrs. Martin had set herself immovably against the automobile for which Phoebe longed and Ernest languished.

"That boy will be brought home some day on a shutter if you get one," was her invariable comment when Mr. Martin, primed thereto, by both son and daughter, carefully broached the subject to her. "If we could afford a chauffeur, I wouldn't mind. But you know as well as I do, Edward, that that child will insist on running it himself. And you know how that would end. Why, I never take up a paper without reading an account of an automobile accident."

"But, mother, he rides in other people's automobiles," Mr. Martin would remonstrate.

"And they've all got chauffeurs," Mrs. Martin would point out triumphantly.

She did not know—neither did Mr. Martin for that matter—that every evening, in the temporary absence of the Warburton chauffeur, Ernest drove the Warburton motor to Rosedale to meet Mr. Warburton and the five-thirty train. The graceless Tug had delegated that duty to Ernest in order that he himself might stay longer with Phoebe. Ten minutes going—fifteen minutes coming—those twenty-five minutes of near-flying marked the climax of Ernest's day.

"Ernest was as fussy as a girl to-day picking out his clothes," Mrs. Martin went on tranquilly. "He tried on so many coats that I was ashamed to ask the salesman to bring out another suit. It seems that he wanted a certain effect about the shoulders that he had noticed in Tug's clothes. I told Ernie that Tug has had a tailor for over a year now and that you can't expect as much from ready-made clothes as from custom made. Then he asked me if he couldn't go to a tailor—but I told him that he couldn't until he'd got his growth. Afterward, when we bought a hat and some ties, he was so hard to please that I was really mortified. I guess he bought a dozen ties in all. What do you suppose has got into the child?" Her tone was half-annoyed, half -gratified.

"Oh, it's only a girl," Mr. Martin said, his eye hurdling the inch-high type of his newspaper.

"A girl!" Mrs. Martin repeated—and laughed. "Why, Ernie hates girls. You can't drive him to go where they are." Mrs. Martin's tone was not that of displeasure.

"Well, there's always a first one, you know," Mr. Martin said. Suddenly he put his paper down, leaned back in his Morris chair and roared. "Mother, I wish you could have seen me with my first girl. Her name was Minnie. Did I ever tell you about Minnie Pratt?"

Mrs. Martin looked at him, speechless. Had he ever told her about Minnie Pratt! Their first post-matrimonial quarrel had been over Minnie Pratt. Even at this late day Mrs. Martin could see in her mind's eye the photograph of Minnie Pratt which Mr. Martin had preserved for so long. After the quarrel an impulse of chivalry had driven Mrs. Martin to set that same photograph up on his bureau. She never told him with what secret joy she discovered it one day, dusty and cracked and forgotten, caught and crushed between the bureau and the wall.

"Why, I had it so bad," Mr. Martin went on, "that I couldn't eat or sleep—I lost flesh. I "gussied" up so for Minnie that I was town-talk. As for the family—they made my life a perfect misery. Bertha, here's something that I have never told any living, mortal being. Do you remember how my hair used to curl in front? Min told me once that she liked curls. Well, after that, I used to carry a little comb in my pocket. When I saw Min coming I would lift my hat and comb those curls further down on my forehead." Mr. Martin roared again.

Mrs. Martin did not laugh. Prickles of a curious mixed emotion as of twin jealousies—jealousy of her husband's past, jealousy of her boy's future—tore her. For a moment she had a feeling that the whole man-half of her family had deserted her.

"Ernest is very different from other boys," she said with emphasis. It was evident that she felt him to be very different indeed from the from person of the Minnie Pratt episode. "When I see him with a girl I'll believe it."

Mrs. Martin never opened the subject again with Mr. Martin. But to say that she watched Ernest as closely as a cat watches a mouse describes only faintly the persistence of her study of him.

Gradually she came to realize that she was watching a new Ernest—an Ernest who promised to be one of the sartorial wonders of the age. Certain admonitions—Mr. Martin had often asked her why she did not say them into a phonograph and set it in Ernest's room—dropped from her lips no more. "Have you cleaned your teeth?" "Did you put on a new collar?" "Have you a clean handkerchief?" "Go back and black your shoes." "Did you wash your neck and ears clean?" "Let me see your finger-nails." "Remember to take a bath to-night"—she had no occasion for any of them now. In brief, Ernest presented himself at breakfast the mould of fashion. He appeared at dinner the glass of form.

As for Ernest——

In the morning he went to school fifteen minutes earlier than usual. Rounding a certain corner, he invariably met Miss Faxon face to face. From her came a "Good morning!" a flashing glance which seemed to inject electricity into his veins—and Ernest's day was a blank until three o'clock. It need not have been a blank so long if he could have mustered up enough courage to turn and walk with her. But such enterprising conduct was beyond him.

From nine until two he spent most of his time shooting furtive glances at Fay. As she still sat in front of him, all he could get was that distracting maze of curls, the long, lilylike curves which enclosed her neck, the exquisite, toy-like bit of ivory, faintly touched with rose, which was her ear.

At two o'clock he went home.

From a quarter-past two to a quarter of three he sat lounging in the bay window until Fay passed the house. Five minutes later he had joined the High School Parade.

The course of this daily walk of the undergraduates lay down Main Street, through the long curving bow of Linden Avenue, through Bartlett Terrace and onto Main Street again. For two hours groups of boys and groups of girls wove past each other, saluting punctiliously at the moment of transit. Occasionally the alien groups mingled—the result a sudden division into pairs. Hitherto Ernest's gang had pursued this course, morosely ungregarious, scorning and scorned, indulging in misogynistic jests at the expense of the fussers. Now, like the others, they walked with specific, amorous intent; for Fay Faxon had become the rage in Maywood and the sophomore class had fallen to a man. Sometimes Ernest's gang got only one bow from Fay, although the average for an afternoon was three. One red-letter day the score leaped to five.

All this, be it understood, in no wise interfered with Phoebe's serene belleship. Phoebe was a senior, and the seniors had long ago graduated from the parade habit. In more dignified wise, they fraternized in agonized whispers in the alcoves of the big Maywood library or, in the case of the girls, met for tea in each other's houses.

Said Phoebe casually one night: "Mother, I've invited that new girl I was telling you about—Fay Faxton—to dinner here to-morrow night. Now, you see that you stay at the table, Ern, until we all get up. It will look like a fierce snub to her if you rush through your dinner and get out before anyone else has finished."

Stay at the table! In his excitement, Ernest's food all took the wrong passage. He coughed and choked. Mrs. Martin, glancing in his direction a few moments later, found him gazing into space with the abstracted look of those who see visions.

The Martin dinner was served at half-past six. At half-past five an Ernest, beside whom Solomon in all his splendor were a mean thing, sauntered into the library. Phoebe sat at the desk writing. Mrs. Martin, her air that of an ostentatious concentration, appeared to read. With no one observing, Ernest gave way to the restlessness which threatened to explode him into inch-pieces, He wanted Fay to come. And yet the terror of meeting her eyes, of having to talk with her! He looked at the clock, yawned, walked to the window, returned to the table, ran through a magazine, kicked the waste-basket over, balled up the morning's newspaper and threw it at the cat, fiddled with the mantel adornments, yawned, and repeated the whole program.

"Oh, Ern, for goodness' sake, do sit down!" Phoebe pleaded once.

At twenty-five minutes past six he said in a tone whose gruffness did not conceal from his mother the elated tremor of his mouth:

"I guess this must be Miss Faxon coming up the street."

Phoebe brought her note to a finish with a signature which would have put John Hancock to the blush, and bustled to the door.

From the hall came the sound of kisses, exclamations, remonstrances, rustlings of silky things, tappings of girlish heels up the stairs, laughter degenerating shamelessly to giggles and tapering into silence, the slam of a door, an interval of silence, the opening of the door, taps of girlish heels descending the stairs, the rustlings of silky things, talk that was all ejaculation and interruption, choked in laughter—then—"Mother, this is my friend Miss Faxon." "Ern, you know Miss Faxon, of course"—and the door of Paradise had swung wide for Ernest.

After long time his eyes began to focus. He could see Fay plainly when he looked at her. But of course he only looked when she was looking away from him. A white, lacy blur—that was his impression of her clothes. She had done something to her curls—herded them in long files. But before dinner maverick members began to wander off on to her forehead.

Mrs. Martin studied her guest carefully. Miss Faxon seemed to twinkle. Sparkles of light came from one of her pretty hands, from the sidecombs which marshalled her curls, from the pin which suspended visibly her elaborate little watch. It seemed to Mrs, Martin that she saw a second edition of Minnie Pratt at her table.

Opposite Fay sat Phoebe—a trim little Phoebe in a simple, blue serge frock, a tiny, gun-metal watch her only adornment—a Phoebe all budding curves and vanishing angles—a Phoebe of deeply-colored eyes and deeply-colored lips equally innocent of coquetry. Mrs. Martin's look grew proud when it rested upon her.

She believed that the position of guest carried with it the privilege of monopolizing the conversation

Miss Faxon sat between Mr. Martin and Ernest. When the black eyes were not shooting sparks to the left, they were flashing lightnings to the right. She believed, it was evident, that the position of guest carried with it the privilege of monopolizing the conversation. Mrs. Martin offered no interference. In her most expansive mood she could hardly be called a talker. And Phoebe was quite content to listen, to laugh at Miss Faxon's pictures of life in Akron. Mr. Martin roared with laughter all through dinner. As for Ernest—but there is a rapture that forfends mirth.

"What do you think of that girl, Phoeb'?" he asked in a careless tone after Fay had gone.

"Well," Phoebe said in an analyzing tone, "I think she's pretty and I don't think she's pretty. I like her and I don't like her."

For the first time in his life Ernest admitted to himself that Phoebe was girl to the core.

"What do you think of her, mother?"

"She's very entertaining," Mrs. Martin said without enthusiasm. "How old did you say she was, Phoebe?"

For the first time in his life the conviction came to Ernest that his mother was only a woman after all.

"What did you think of her, father?"

"I think she's a mighty pretty girl," Mr. Martin said warmly.

For the first time in his life Ernest realized that he and his father belonged to the same sex.

Ernest went to his room early that night.

When Mrs. Martin was dusting his books the next day a paper, covered with Ernest's round-lettered scrawl, fell into her hands. He must have been copying poetry. But at one side of the paper a column of rhyme-words presented evidence ruinous to that theory. She glanced at it.

"Curls running low on her temples, curls running high on her brow,
Curls running——"

Mrs. Martin closed the book with a snap.

At five the next night Ernest started as usual for the Rosedale station with the Warburton automobile. A little way out of Maywood the road ran through four miles of lonely country. Ernest, safe from police surveillance, was going at top speed. This progress brought him, in a minute or two, level with a girl walking toward Rosedale. Ernest looked once—looked twice. Little could he believe his eyes. Less could he believe his luck. It looked like—it must be—it was Fay. He curved over to the sidewalk—stopped.

"Are you going far—I mean would you like a ride?" he faltered, his heart fluttering in his throat.

Miss Faxon jumped. She turned and bowed and smiled, but it seemed an age before she said anything.

"I'm going as far as the Rosedale station," Ernest added in desperate corollary. "Do you come this way often? It's queer I haven't seen you before. I come by here every night."

Miss Faxon's gaze left Ernest's face and roamed absently over the fields. Ernest had a curious feeling that she was thinking of something quite different from his offer of a lift. For the first time he looked his fill at her.

Her little, white, heart-shaped face seemed to be sunk in the huge, black, heart-shaped frame of her hat. The wind had shattered her curls into tendrils, had blown them against the velvet brim—they clung there like a fine embroidery,

"Thank you," she said at last. "Did you say you came by here every night, Mr. Martin?"

It was the first time in his life that Ernest had ever been called Mr. Martin. He flushed. "Every night," he said. "I'm doing it for Tug Warburton. He has other things he likes better to do, and I love to run a car."

Again Miss Faxon paused before she spoke, But she stared at him so hard and her gaze grew so piercing that Ernest's eyes dropped under it. He looked away, conscious of that maddening sensation of not being able to hold his lips firm. Suddenly her abstraction broke, and she smiled. She lifted to her chin the great snowy wad of her muff and stood sparkling at him over it.

"Mr. Martin," she said, "I'm going to tell you something that I haven't ever told anybody else. I'm going to tell you because I trust you and because you can help me. But you must promise never to tell anybody until I give you permission. Can you keep a secret?"

A secret between them! Ernest thrilled. He looked at her straight now. His lips trembled no longer, but indignation roughened his voice. "Of course I won't tell," he said.

Fay laughed blithely. "Of course I really knew that I could trust you. That's why I choose you to help me. I'm going over to the Rosedale woods to meet my brother. He is the black sheep of my family, and my parents will let me have nothing to do with him. But I love him and trust him and I will see him."

Fay's eyes flashed. Her lips drew together until they narrowed to twin lines of coral red.

"I want to see him every night as long as he stays in this part of the country. But I don't want Aunt Ella to know, for she would put a stop to it at once. If I tell her I'm going autoing with you, she will suspect nothing. Do you mind taking me along every night?"

Mind! A new, wonderful world swam into Ernest's ken. Even as he considered it, it burst, bubble-wise, and disclosed a lovelier one. "Of course I will. I'll be coming past here just after five, and I'll gladly pick you up."

She leaned a little toward him, chin tilted—eyes, lips, level with him

Fay laughed. She jumped into the car beside him. It is to be said to the credit of Ernest's inexperience that they went like mad that first ride, his clean-cut boyish profile, stern in its concentration, turned not once to the girl at his side. For Ernest, indeed, it was enough that she was there.

Two weeks passed. Mrs. Martin, still watching her son closely, realized as nobody else in the household realized, that new forces were at work within him. She had a strange sense of separation from him. Often he was moody, taciturn, absent. Always he was restless. All this was accented by his increasing comeliness. For he was growing handsome. Even Phoebe noticed that. The persistent gym work of the last year had done wonders to his face. He was clean-skinned, satin-cheeked, rosy. It had put confidence into his shambling gait. He was light, quick, active. And in the last two weeks the sulky look had left his eyes. They were as clear as mountain springs and often they sparkled with a look of—what was it? Triumph, Mrs. Martin translated it.

It was no wonder that Ernest's air had changed. For, after fourteen rides with Fay, he often met her eyes without blushing. He could even endure the sudden pressure of her hand without slewing the machine across the road. It was fortunate that he had gained such control of his muscles, for Miss Faxon seemed always to emphasize her delight in the sunset by dainty pawings at his shoulder, with convulsive catches at his arm. Other things she had taught him—to go slowly enough to permit conversation, for instance.

"Stop here!" she commanded midway in their drive one night. "I want to say something to you." They stopped. She turned and poured the molten mischief of her black eyes into Ernest's gray ones. "You've been awfully good to me, Mr. Martin," she said.

As always in her presence, Ernest had to struggle to be even articulate. "I haven't done anything for you," he brought out at last.

"Oh, yes, you have," she asserted. A shake of her head made the sunset light play in prismatic dance across her curls. "And I'm going to pay you for it. What would you like? Name your own reward. Whatever you ask for, you shall have." She leaned a little toward him, chin tilted—eyes, lips level with his.

Ernest stared at her, bewildered. He would have given anything in his possession to Fay. But he could think of nothing that he would ask of her. It seemed wrong to him, somehow, for a girl to be giving things to a man. While he hesitated the breeze helped out of his dilemma. It blew one of the curls at her temples across her forehead.

"I'd like that curl," he said.

"All right." Fay seemed to find his choice deliciously comic, for she kept bursting into laughter. "I guess you'll have to use a knife. Have you one?"

Ernest cut the curl close to her forehead. He sat for an instant a little awkwardly holding it. And as he looked he grew pale. Perhaps he felt that he held the essence of femininity in that silky-soft film of girlhood. Very quietly at last he put it away in his pocket. He did not speak again. Nor did he look at Fay. But she, casting furtive glances at him, may have noticed his pallor. At any rate, she, too, refrained from speech until they had come to the end of the drive.

"Good-by, Mr. Martin," she said as she jumped out. And then lower, "Good-by, Ernest."

That "Ernest" brought all the blood back to his face. "Good-by, Fay," he answered.

Fay did not appear at school the next day. Ernest was a little glad not to see her. Sometimes—this he did not confess even to himself—he hated to have his dreams of the ideal Fay dispersed by the perturbing vision of the real Fay. He went home immediately after school and settled himself down in the library, using a book as a pretext for dreams.

Long before dinner Phoebe came rushing into the house.

"What do you suppose Fay Faxon has done, mother?" she said in the voice of one announcing calamity.

Ernest stopped reading, although he still held the book. "What?" his mother asked for him.

"She's run away—eloped—got married." It tumbled out so fast that Phoebe barely separated her words. "It seems that she's twenty years old—not seventeen at all—and that she fell in love with a dreadful man—a summer boarder in Akron that her folks wouldn't let her have anything to do with. They sent her down here to school to break it up. Mrs. Wilder thought all the time she knew everything that Fay was doing. But there are all kinds of stories out—Mrs. Wilder's milkman says that Fay has been going over to the Rosedale woods every night to meet a man. Fay told Mrs. Wilder that she was going autoing with Ern in Tug's machine. Did she really ever go with you, Ern?"

Ernest heard himself say, "I gave her a lift once or twice." Something, he did not himself quite understand the impulse, compelled him to add, "She never asked me—I always offered."

"Well, they ran away last night," Phoebe concluded. "They telegraphed Mrs. Wilder from Boston. Don't you remember, mother, I never did quite like that girl."

They sat down to dinner. Mrs. Martin, without looking at her son, knew that he did not eat. "Ernie," she said at last, "you've got one of those bilious attacks coming on. Hadn't you better go right up to bed?"

"Guess I will," Ernest said. He arose mechanically.

"I thought Ernest had got over those bilious attacks," Mr. Martin said,

"I wonder he doesn't have more," Phoebe volunteered, "the way he eats candy!"

But for the first time in his life Ernest was struggling with something more tragic than a bilious attack. After a time he started to undress. But half way through this process he stopped short. His hand, searching an inner pocket, brought out a fine-spun weft of hair. He burned it in the flame of the gas. Then he turned the light out and lay on the bed, tense, taut.

At ten a knock came at his door. He unlocked it. His mother stood there with a pitcher of milk and a plate of cookies. She walked across to the bureau with them and, mechanically, he followed her. She sat down, but she did not light the gas.

"You'll wake up hungry by and by, dear," she said, "your headaches always go quickly."

"Yes, I suppose so," he answered.

Mrs. Martin's arm went out suddenly and she pulled Ernest to her lap. It had been years since she had held him, but the boy's figure relaxed to fit the position as if he were still a baby. He buried his face in her shoulder, and so, without speaking, they sat for a long, long time.

Later, Mrs. Martin joined Mr. Martin.

"Edward," she said casually, "you know you spoke the other night of that Minnie Pratt. How long did it take you to get over your infatuation for her?"

"Oh, a fortnight, I guess," Mr. Martin said, yawning comfortably. "Maybe longer."

"Well, what cured you?"

Mr. Martin twinkled. "You'll laugh when I tell you, mother. My father bought me a bicycle—one of those big, high, old fashioned ordinaries. I was so busy curing myself up from bumps and bruises and sprains that, before I knew it, my broken heart had mended itself. What are you stirring that old matter up for, mother?"

He buried his face in her shoulder, and so, without speaking, they sat for a long time

"Nothing," Mrs. Martin flashed him a cryptic smile, "maybe I'm jealous."

Like many serious- minded women, Mrs. Martin had but a small and rare sense of humor. Yet it had a kind of elusive delicacy. Mr. Martin paid this sample the tribute first of a stare, then of hearty laughter.

A little later, after a ramble, carefully premeditated, among other subjects, Mrs. Martin again took the lead in the conversation.

"Father," she said, "I've been thinking this whole matter over, and I've come to the conclusion that I wouldn't mind if you got Ernie a runabout."

"Good for you, mother! I don't mind telling you that I'm crazy for one myself. You see I——"

Mrs. Martin ignored Mr. Martin's preferences. "If I send him into the office to-morrow, will you go with him while he picks one out? He knows exactly what he wants—he has his nose in an automobile magazine half the time."

"All right. Send him in. Sure you won't change your mind?"

"Oh, I'm sure of that," Mrs. Martin said with conviction.

 

Upstairs, Ernest had fallen asleep. His mother's tender silence had softened the constriction of his body: it had melted the lump in his throat. He lay utterly relaxed now, his head half hidden by his pillow. But now and then a catch of his breath disturbed the regularity of his breathing, and something that glittered slipped from under his eyelashes and slid slowly down his cheek.