Albert spent some of his daylight hours in bed; some in moving about the room spiritlessly. He looked out with lack-lustre eyes at the sagging wires, and seemed to be wondering how they could ever have interested him. His mother, as soon as she saw him, put him at death's door--at least she saw him headed straight for that dark portal. She began to insist, after a few days, that he go home with her: he would be hers, by right, within a fortnight, anyhow. Her new house, she declared, would be an immensely better place for him, and would immensely help him to get well, if--with a half-sob--he ever _was_ to get well. She knew, of course, the early legend of Johnny McComas, and had no wish to linger in its locale. "You _do_ want to go with your own, own mother--don't you, dear?" "Yes," replied Albert faintly. The town-house of Johnny McComas, bought at an open-eyed bargain and on a purely commercial basis, had some time since fulfilled its predestined function. It had been taken over, at a very good price, by an automobile company; the purchasers had begun to tear it down before the last load of furniture was fairly out, and had quickly run up a big block in russet brick and plate glass. Gertrude McComas had had no desire to inherit memories of her predecessor; if she had not urged the promptest action her husband's plan might have given him a still more gratifying profit. They had built their new house out on the North Shore. At one time the society of that quarter had seemed, however desirable to the McComases, somewhat inaccessible. But the second wife was more likely to help Johnny thitherward than the first. Besides, the participation of the new pair in the scheme of dramatic uplift--however slight, essentially--had made the promised land nearer and brighter. They might now transplant themselves to that desired field with a certainty of some few social relations secured in advance. They had a long-reaching, rough-cast house, in a semi-Spanish style, high above the water. They had ten acres of lawn and thicket. They had their own cow. And there was little Althea--a nice enough child--for a playmate. "Let me get Albert away from all this smoke and grime," his mother pleaded--or argued--or demanded, dramatically. "Let me give him the pure country air. Let me give him the right things to eat and drink. Let me look after his poor little clothes,--if" (with another half-sob) "he is ever to wear them again. Let me give him a real mother's real care. You _would_ like that better, wouldn't you, dear?" "Yes," said Albert faintly. It is quite possible, of course, that his school really had scanted the motherly touch. "You see how it goes!" Raymond finally said to me, one evening, in the shadow of the orchestrion. "And what she will dress him in _this_ time...!" The whole situation wore on him horribly. There was a light play over his cheeks and jaws: I almost heard his teeth grit.