Her face turned darkly red. "Oh," she cried, passionately, "'opinion'! What difference does his 'opinion' make to me? A mother is a mother. And I love him! Oh, I love him so, I could just _die_! If he would put his arms around me the way he does to that terrible Miss Lydia, and kiss me, and say"--she clenched her hands and closed her eyes, and whispered the word she hungered to hear--"'_Mother! Mother!_' If I could hear him say _that_," she said, "I could just lie down and die! Couldn't you?--to hear him say 'Father'?" Robertson set his teeth. "And what kind of an idea would he have of his 'father'? No, I won't consent to it!" "We can't get him in any other way," she urged. "Then we'll never get him. I can't face it." "You don't love him as much as I do!" "I love him enough not to want to risk losing his respect." But this sentiment was beyond Johnny's mother; all she thought of was her aching hunger for the careless, good-humored, but bored young man. The hunger for him grew and grew; it gnawed at her day and night. She urged Carl to take a house in Princeton while Johnny was in college, and only Johnny's father's common sense kept this project from being carried out. "You're afraid!" she taunted him. "Dear," he said, kindly, "I'm afraid of being an ass. If he saw us tagging after him he'd hate us both. He's a man!" Carl said, proudly. "No, I've no fancy for losing the regard of"--he paused--"my son," he said, very quietly. His wife put her hand over her mouth and stared at him; the word was too great for her; it was her baby she thought of, not her son. In Johnny's first vacation, when she had rushed to Old Chester in June to open the house, she was met by the information that he was going off for the summer on a geological expedition. Mary's disappointment made her feel a little sick. "What _shall_ I do without you!" "Oh, if Aunty can do without me, I guess outsiders can," said Johnny, with clumsy amiability. "We'll be here when you get back in September," she said. He yawned, and said, "All right." Then he strolled off, and she went upstairs and cried. Johnny, walking home after this embarrassing interview, striking at the roadside brambles with a switch and whistling loudly, said to himself: "How on earth did Mr. Robertson fall in love with her? _He's_ got brains." A day or two later he went off for his geological summer, leaving in his mother's heart that rankling word, "outsiders." As the weeks dragged along and she counted the days until he would be back, she brooded and brooded over it. It festered so deeply that she could not speak of it to Johnny's father. But once she said: "He's ungrateful! See all we've done for him!"--and Carl realized that bitterness toward Miss Lydia, who had "robbed" her, was extending to the boy himself. And again--it was in August, and Johnny was to be at home in a fortnight--she said, "He ought to be _made_ to come to us!"