"I can't place you at all, Bruce. Now, I should have thought you would have been a reformer--worked for humanity--that line, you know. You were a sensitive lad, like a girl." "I am quite too warm-hearted a fellow to be a philanthropist," laughed Neckart. "The philanthropists I know work for principles, liberty, education and the like: they don't care a damn for the individual Tom and Jerry. The chances are, that your reformer is a cold-blooded tyrant at home: he makes a god of his one idea: his god makes him nervous, ill-conditioned--the last man in the world to choose for a friend or a husband." "You amaze me! I should have said that they were the wisest and purest of men. Next to clergymen, of course. I don't go to church myself, but I respect the cloth. But speaking of yourself, Bruce, you were a most affectionate little fellow. Do you remember how you referred every new idea to your mother? I recollect you told me once that you read your lessons in your school classics to her to amuse her. You must have cleaned the translation sometimes to make it fit for her ear." "Yes." "And I remember, too," regardless of the sudden silence which had fallen on his companion, "how you watched my wife making a cap one day--she had nice fingers in such work, Virginie--and how you saved your money to buy lace and ribbon for her to make your mother a cap; and how anxiously you sat watching every stitch as it went in, and carried it off triumphantly when it was done." "I remember quite well. Mrs. Swendon was very kind to me in the matter." The captain did not reply: he glanced at Neckart with sudden alarm. What was it that he had heard of Bruce's mother? Some wretched story that came out at the time of her death: had she committed a crime or gone mad? He could not recall it, but something in the silence of his companion told him that he had blundered. He began to smoke violently in contrition of soul, and remained silent, while Neckart lay still in the sand, his hands clasped behind his head, looking at the surf. It was not the surf he saw. It was that little silly cap which he had held on his boy's chapped fist delighted and proud. Twenty years ago! He had earned the money to buy it by work after the other boys in the shop had gone home. He could see the very pattern now that was worked in the lace, and the ribbon--a pale blue, just the color of his mother's eyes. He had carried it home in the evening, and smoothed the gray hair over the gentle little face, and tied it on her before he would let her go to the glass. She was just as pleased as he, and kissed him with her arms tight about his neck and the tears in her eyes. An hour afterward he had found her tearing it into bits with an idiotic laugh. A little later-- He shut his eyes, as if to keep out some real sight before him. It seemed to him as if his whole boyhood had been made up of just such nights as this one which he remembered.