She never called him so again, or kissed him either, until the night three years later when he was going away to school next day. And then she did not offer it herself. She said good-by to him at his father’s house, and went back to her own home, where she had lived alone since her husband’s death, and which seemed lonelier to her than ever, because on the morrow Phil would be gone. Phil was her idol, her pride, and his daily visits had made much of the sunshine of her life, and as she undressed herself for bed, and then went to wind the tall clock in the kitchen corner, the tears rolled down her face and dropped upon the floor. She was a little deaf, and standing with her back to the street door she neither saw nor heard anything until she felt a pair of arms close tightly around her neck, and Phil’s lips were pressed against hers. “For the dear Lord’s sake how you scart me. What on airth brought you here!” she exclaimed, turning toward him with her nightcap border flying back, and her tallow candle in her hand. Phil was half crying, too, as he replied: “I could not go away without kissing you once more, and having you kiss me. You haven’t done so since that time I got so plaguy mad and called you names. I’ve cried about it fifty times, I’ll bet. I want you to forgive it, and kiss me, too. I’m awful sorry granny.” The pet name for her in his babyhood, and which he had long since discarded, dropped from his lips naturally now, and putting down her candle the old lady took him in her arms and nearly strangled him as she sobbed: “Forgive you, Phil? Of course I will, with all my heart, and kiss you, too. Any woman, young or old, would like to kiss a mouth like yours.” We do not believe our readers will like Philip Rossiter the less for this little incident, or because even in his young manhood he had a mouth which any woman, young or old, might like to kiss. A handsome mouth it was, with full red lips which always seemed just ready to break into a merry, saucy laugh, but which you felt intuitively had never been polluted by an oath, or vulgar word, or low insinuation against any one. In thought, and word, and deed, he was as pure as any girl, and held all women in the utmost respect, because his mother was a woman.