Equal to the occasion, Jean, I’ll wager, showed no embarrassment, and though her brother was bursting with rage and shame, he, too, was mindful not to make a scene. But what a dinner it must have been! Yet I can imagine that Jean kept the conversation going in her inimitable way. Dinner over, she asked her brother when he was going home. “Just as soon as you can get your things packed,” Dick said significantly. Knowing the Norton blood was up, she made the best of it and returned with him. After that she stayed closely at home. People in general did not know of her elopement, nor of the fact that she was to become a mother. Both she and her mother kept secluded for months. I wish I knew just how old her mother’s youngest child was when Jean’s child was born. My impression is that he was at least three or four years old. Nevertheless, it is stated as a fact, and was generally believed in the village, that at the birth of Jean’s baby, Mrs. Norton, its grandmother, put the baby to her own breast, and, by sheer force of will causing the milk to flow, brought up the child at her breast! He always called her “Mamma,” and his own mother by her given name; and although after a time, the fact of his parentage was learned, the family pride was saved to a great degree. People tacitly accepted the child as Jean’s youngest brother, and he himself thought he was until quite a lad. Not having learned of all this till years after it occurred, the impression it made upon me was far less pronounced than when I learned about a certain girl, nearer my own age, who “went wrong.” But I did not learn of this little tragedy till a year or two afterward, although when I did, I was so sorry for the girl that there was no room for blame, and I was glad to know that Mother, knowing it all along, had befriended her; I loved my mother the more for it. But how incredible that such a thing had happened to one I actually knew! I used to wonder how she could go on living and acting like other folk; how she could meet that young man on the street; how she could fulfil her daily tasks. Divining what she must secretly have suffered, I felt sure her keenest grief must come from knowing that she was not as good as people thought her. I used to wish that she knew I knew of it, and that Mother had known it all the time, and yet that we felt the same toward her. I was sure that would have been a comfort to her.