Mr. Robertson looked pleased when she told him, anxiously, that "it _was_ showing--the likeness. He has your mouth. And people might--" "I wish to God I could own him," said Carl Robertson. "Carl, he wants a pony! Buy one for him." But Johnny didn't get his pony, because when Mr. Robertson told Miss Lydia he was thinking of buying a horse for his boy, she said: "No; it isn't good for him, please, to have so many things." "The idea of her interfering!" Mary told her husband. CHAPTER V "I'M going to invite him to visit us next winter," Mary said. This was at the end of the summer, and the prospect of saying good-by to Johnny for almost a year was more than she could bear. "My dear!" her husband protested, "if you got him under your own roof you wouldn't be able to hold on to yourself! I could, but you couldn't. You'd tell him." "I wouldn't! Why, I _couldn't_. Of course he can never know. . . . But I'm going to see--that woman, and tell her that I shall have him visit us." "She'll not permit it." "'Permit'!" Mary said. "Upon my word! My own child not '_permitted_'!" "It's hard," Carl said, briefly. "You want him, too," she said, eagerly; "I can see you do! Think of having him with us for a week! I could go into his room and--and pick up his clothes when he drops them round on the floor, the way boys do." She was breathless at the thought of such happiness. "I'll tell her I'm going to have him come in the Christmas vacation. Oh, Carl"--her black, heavy eyes suddenly glittered with tears--"I want my baby," she said. The words stabbed him; for a moment he felt that there was no price too great to pay for comfort for her. "We'll try it," he said, "but we'll have to handle Miss Lydia just right to get her to consent to it." "'Consent'?" she said, fiercely. "Carl, I just hate her!" The long-smothered instinct of maternity leaped up and scorched her like a flame; she put her dimpled hands over her face and cried. He tried to tell her that she wasn't just. "After all, dear, we disowned him. Naturally, she feels that he belongs to her." But she could not be just: "He belongs to us! And she prejudices him against us. I know she does. I said to him yesterday that her clothes weren't very fashionable. I just said it for fun; and he said, 'You shut up!'" "_What!_" Johnny's father said, amused and horrified. "I believe she likes him to be rude to me," Mary said. Her jealousy of Miss Lydia had taken the form of suspicion; if Johnny was impertinent, if that shabby Miss Lydia meant more to him than she did--the rich, beneficent, adoring Mrs. Robertson!--it must be because Miss Lydia "influenced" him. It was to counteract that influence that she planned the Christmas visit; if she could have him to herself, even for a week, with all the enjoyments she would give him, she was sure she could rout "that woman" from her place in his heart!