Bessie asked the question just as her mother came in. Mrs. Hardy said "Yes," and going up to George sat down by him and laid her hand on his head as his sister had done. The boy moved uneasily. He saw the marks of great suffering on his mother's face, but he said nothing to express sorrow for his disgrace. "Bess, will you go and get George his breakfast?" asked Mrs. Hardy; and the minute she was gone the mother turned to her son and said: "George, do you love me?" George had been expecting something different. He looked at his mother as the tears fell over her face, and all that was still good in him rose up in rebellion against the animal part. He seized his mother's hand and carried it to his lips, kissed it reverently, and said in a low tone:-- "Mother, I am unworthy. If you knew--" He checked himself as if on the verge of confession. His mother waited anxiously, and then asked: "Won't you tell me all?" "No; I can't!" George shuddered, and at that moment Bess came in, bearing a tray with toast and eggs and coffee. Mrs. Hardy left Bess to look after her brother, and went out of the room almost abruptly. George looked ashamed, and, after eating a little, told Bess to take the things away. She looked grieved, and he said: "Can't help it; I'm not hungry. Besides, I don't deserve all this attention. Say, Bess, is father still acting under his impression, or dream, or whatever it was?" "Yes, he is," replied Bessie, with much seriousness; "and he is ever so good now, and kisses mother and all of us good-bye in the morning; and he is kind and ever so good. I don't believe he is in his right mind. Will said yesterday he thought father was _non campus meant us_; and then he wouldn't tell me what it meant; but I guess he doesn't think father is just right intellectually." Now and then Bess got hold of a big word and used it for all it would bear. She said "intellectually" over twice, and George laughed a little; but it was a bitter laugh, not such as a boy of his age has any business to possess. He lay down and appeared to be thinking, and, after a while, said aloud: "I wonder if he wouldn't let me have some money while he's feeling that way?" "Who?" queried Bess. "Father?" "What! you here still, Curiosity? Better take these things downstairs!" George spoke with his "headache tone," as Clara called it, and Bess, without reply, gathered up the tray things and went out, while George continued to figure out in his hardly yet sober brain the possibility of his father letting him have more money with which to gamble.