Then, as thought projected itself into the future, and she saw this opening bud grow to the perfect flower, it seemed to her that it would not only be peaceful, but satisfying. Now he was a rolicking boy, and she would see to it that he missed none of life's pleasures that had not a sting;--now he was a lad at school, she standing by his side, thinking his thoughts and leading him on to think hers--she would keep very, very close to him! her little Philip!--then a youth at college--could she let him go away for that?--and now a man fitted for useful life, and with his strong arm shielding her, his mother, who had shielded him, smoothing the pathway for her feet as she went down life's hill. Ah! through it all how she would guard him, guide him, carry him by sheer force of mother-love across the slippery places that his feet would find. His father--and her thought of him, a motherless boy, grew tender--his father had missed this. Perhaps, if he had had it--well, she would make it up to Philip, his child, at any rate. She would try to keep him pure. This with a sudden sinking sense of her own helplessness. The first regret came to her that it was a son she had and not a daughter. A daughter she could keep with her while a son must of necessity go out into the world, and the world, she thought with a pang, was so full of peril, of temptation. The more she pondered it the more her soul was girded for her work. To mould a life! This was what was left her. Well! was it not enough? To find her chief happiness not in living her own, but in fashioning another life. Then to something that spoke within her she made answer, "Yes, of course, it will be lonely, but--" A fragment of a fugitive poem she had once read came to her, "Lonely? Well, and what of that?" She could not recall the next two lines--such scraps are so elusive--but it did not matter. The trumpet call of the thing was in the last line: "Work may be done in loneliness. Work on!" She bowed her head over the crib on which lay her sleeping child. She took his soft dimpled hand between her palms. "Yes, it is lonely, little Philip," she whispered brokenly,--"it will always be lonely, but-- 'Work may be done in loneliness.'" "I'll begin again, dear, and map out another life and we will live it together, you and I. And we will make it just as sweet and full a life as we can--for 'I'll have you and you'll have me.' We won't be gloomy or sad--we will not _let_ ourselves be--nothing shall cast a shadow over this little life we are going to live--_nothing_! It is ours! We will make it the brightest and the best thing we can. We have a right to be happy and we will be! Nobody shall keep us from it, little Philip!" It was in this mood of quiet exaltation that she went down stairs to the reading of the will a little later when the lawyer came.