"Even if I went away from Aunt Sally and the children, Ted, and we had to live in a little flat again?" she stammered. "Even THEN!" he said, with a shaken attempt at a manly voice. "I remember the pears in the carts, and the box you dropped the train tickets into," he said encouragingly, "and I remember Margar's bottles that you used to let me wash! You'd take me into the parks, and down to the beach, wouldn't you, Moth'?" "Oh, Teddy, my little son! I'd try to make a life for you, dear!" "And WE'D be our family, just you and me!" he said uncertainly. "We'd be a family, all by ourselves," she promised him, laughing and crying. And she clung to him hungrily, kissing the smooth little forehead under the rich tumble of hair, her tears falling on his face. Ah, this was hers, this belonged to her alone, out of all the world. "I'm glad you told me how you felt about this, Teddy," she said. "It makes it all clearer to me. You and I, dear--that's the only real life for us. I owe you that. I promise you, we'll never be separated while Mother can help it." His wet little face was pressed against hers. "And you'll NEVER talk about it any more!" he said violently. "Because I cry about it sometimes, at night--" "Never again, my own son!" He lay back on his pillow with a breath of relief, but she kept her arms about him. "Because you don't know how a boy feels about his own mother!" he assured her. Kneeling there, Martie wondered how she had come to forget his rights, forget his point of view for so long! He would always seem a baby to her, but he was a person now, and he had his part in, and his influence upon, her life. Suppose she had left him to cry out this secret hunger of his uncomforted; suppose, while she thought him contentedly playing with Billy and 'Lizabeth, he had been judging and blaming his mother? While she knelt, thinking, he went to sleep. But Lydia wondered what was keeping Martie awake. The light in Martie's room was turned up, and fell in a yellow oblong across the gravel; Lydia dozed and awakened, but the light was always there. Morning broke softly in a fog which did not lift as the hours went by. Malcolm was at home until after lunch, to which meal Teddy and Martie came downstairs unusually well dressed, Martie observing that she had errands down town. Teddy kissed Grandpa good-bye as usual, and his mother kissed Grandpa, too, which was not quite usual, and clung with her white hands to his lapel. "Teddy and I have shopping to do down town, Pa, and I've written Cliff a note!" she said. Her father brightened. "I'm glad you're inclined to act sensibly, my dear!" he said, departing. "I thought we'd hear a different story this morning!" "What are you going down town for?" asked Lydia. "I ought to have some rubber rings from Mallon's." "I'm taking a lot of things down--I have to pass the cleaner's anyway," answered Martie. "I'll get them, and send them."