Flossy heard about it, almost before Jap had awakened to his own joy, and he never knew of the hour she spent in passionate grief. In some vague way it seemed to tear open the old wound. Without knowing why, she resented the fact that Isabel's brunette beauty had won Jap. She told herself that it was not a fitting match for him. Flossy, in her maternal soul, had looked to heights undreamed of by the retiring boy. She had planned a future for him that would be sadly hampered by marriage with a village belle. But only smiles met him when he brought Isabel to her, his plain features glorified by joy in her possession. Somehow the story of Jap Herron, the youthful Mayor of Bloomtown, his advent in its environs, and the story of his romance with the banker's daughter, crept into the country press, was carried over into the city papers and flung broadcast, so that friend and foe might seek him out. One dreary fall day, when the rain was beating sullenly down on the sodden leaves, a haggard, dirty woman straggled into the office. "I'm lookin' for Jasper Herron," she mumbled. "They told me I'd find him in here." Jap looked at her in horror. His heart sank. "I am his poor old mother, that he run away from and left to starve," she said viciously. And Jap, just on the threshold of his greatest happiness, was turned aside by this grizzly, drunken phantom from the past. CHAPTER XIV Little J. W. crawled out from under Bill's case, his brown eyes wide with surprise at this vagrant who called Jap "son." "Run like sin," counselled Bill, in a whisper, "and bring your mother. She will know what to do." While the boy went to do his bidding, Bill slipped out of the rear door of the office and was waiting in front of the bank when Flossy came hurrying along. "Oh, Bill, what has Jap said?" she asked breathlessly. From J. W.'s lisping description--he always lisped when he was excited--she had come to fear the worst. "Nothing," said Bill bluntly. "He's sitting at his case, sticking type as if he was hired by the minute." "And she--that awful woman?" "Gee!" Bill spat the word. "You don't know anything yet. Wait till you lamp her over." "That bad, Bill?" "Worse," muttered Bill. And when Flossy came inside and looked into the little inner office where the woman sprawled, half asleep and muttering incoherently, the fumes of liquor and the presence of filth all too evident, her stomach rebelled and she retreated swiftly. Softly she slipped into the composing room through the wide-open door. Timidly she approached Jap and touched his arm. He looked at her with eyes utterly hopeless. "Oh, Jap, what can I do!" "You cannot do anything," his voice flat and emotionless. "No one can. Could you take her in? No! She is impossible, and yet--she is my mother. Perhaps if I had stayed with her it would have been different, so I must make up for it." Flossy looked into his set face in affright.