"Do you remember what you said once, Jerry, when I asked you what you would do if you had a lot of money?" Gyp had asked as they sat out on the veranda watching the stars. "And you said you'd go to school as long as ever you could and then----" Jerry had raised suddenly to an upright position from the step where she was curled. "Oh"--she cried, her voice deep with delight--"now I can go back to Highacres----" Then, at the very moment of her ecstasy, she was strangely disturbed by the quick touch of her mother's hand laid on her shoulder. CHAPTER XXVIII HER MOTHER'S STORY Sometime after she had gone to sleep, Jerry wakened suddenly with the disturbing conviction that someone needed her. At the same moment her ear caught a sound that made her slip her bare feet quickly to the floor and stand, listening. It had been a soft step beneath her window--a little sigh. In a flash Jerry sped down the narrow stairway, past the open door of the room where Little-Dad lay snoring, and out across the veranda. In the dim light of the moon that hung low in the arc of the blue-black sky, Jerry made out the figure of her mother, standing near the rough bench that overlooked the valley. "Mother!" "Jerry, child, and in your bare feet!" "I heard you out here. Isn't it dreadfully late? Can't you sleep? Mother, look at me," for Mrs. Westley had kept her face averted. "Mother, darling, why do you look so--sort of--sad?" Jerry's voice was reproachful. "We're so happy now that we are together, aren't we? And it _will_ be nice to have lots of things and Little-Dad won't ever have to worry and----" Mrs. Travis lifted her hand suddenly and laid it across Jerry's lips. "Child, I am not sad. I have been out here fighting away forever the foolish fears that have stalked by my side since you were a very little girl. Some day, when you're a mother, you'll know how I've felt--how I've dreaded facing this moment! How often I've sat with you and watched the baby robins make their first flight from the nest and have laughed at the fussy mother robin scolding and worrying up in a nearby branch----" "But, mamsey, you've always told me how the mother robin _pushes_ the little ones out of the nest to make them _know_ that they can fly!" Mrs. Travis accepted the rebuke in silence. Jerry slipped her hand into her mother's. Her mother held it close.