Yet there came a moment when the urge of maternity was greater than the instinct of secrecy, greater even than the fear of awakening in herself that "liking" which would inevitably mean pain. She and Johnny's father were to leave Old Chester the next day; for a week she had been counting the hours until they would start, and she could turn her back on this gnawing temptation! But when that last day came, she vacillated: "I'll just walk down and look at Miss Lydia's; he might be going in or coming out. . . . No! I won't; he might see me, and think-- . . . I must--I must. . . . Oh, I _can't_, I won't!" Yet in the late afternoon she slipped out of the house and went stealthily down the carriage road, and, standing in the shadow of one of the great stone gateposts, stared over at Miss Lydia's open door. As she stood there she heard a sound. Her heart leaped--and fell, shuddering. Just once in her life had she felt that elemental pang; it was when another sound, the little, thin cry of birth pierced her ears. Now the sound was of laughter, the shrill, cracking laughter of an adolescent boy. She crept back to the big house, so exhausted that she said to old Alfred, "Tell Mr. Robertson that I have a headache, and am lying down." Later, when her husband, full of concern at her discomfort, came upstairs to sit on the edge of her bed and ask her how she felt, she told him what had happened. "I wouldn't see him for anything," she said, gasping; "even his voice just about killed me! Oh, Carl, suppose I were to like him? Oh, what shall I do?--_I don't want to like him._" "Why, my dear, it would be all right if you did," he tried to reassure her. "There's no reason why you shouldn't see him once in a while--and like him, too. _I_ like him, though I haven't spoken to him. But I'm going to." "Oh, Carl, don't--" she besought him. But he said: "Don't worry. You know I would never do anything rash." And the next day he stopped boldly at Miss Lydia's door, and talked about the weather, and gave Johnny a dollar. "Go downstreet and buy something," he said. And Johnny said, "Thank you, sir!" and went off, whistling. "He's a promising boy," Mr. Robertson said, in a low voice. Miss Lydia was extremely nervous during this five minutes. She had been nervous during the weeks that Mary and Carl were up there in the big house. Suppose they should see just how "promising" Johnny was--and want him?--and say they would take him? Then she would reassure herself: "They can only take their son--and they don't want _him_!" Yet she was infinitely relieved when, the next day, the Smith house was finally closed and the "For Sale or To Let" sign put up on the iron gates that shut the graveled driveway from Old Chester's highroad. "They'll sell the house and never come back," she told herself. And indeed Johnny was a year older, a year more plucky and high-tempered and affectionate, before Miss Lydia had any further cause for uneasiness.