There was neither quiver nor glow about the place where Father finally stopped of his own accord. In a wide part of the street, huge piles of lumber were stacked. Father would walk slowly along these, looking at them very hard, and then he would go into a tiny, stuffy little wooden clap-boarded house--just one room, with men in shirt sleeves writing at desks--and there he would talk incomprehensible grown-up talk with one of the men, and the man would write at his desk, and Father standing up, would write in a note-book with a fountain pen ... and that was all the fun there was to the lumber business! Left to himself, Neale sat on the door-step and watched the fascinating life on the docks. Once he slipped across the street and tried to follow a truck in, but a big man with a red face yelled at him so loudly to "get out of there" that Neale ran back again, furiously angry but not knowing how to get around the big watchman. All he could do was to sit just inside the door, hating the watchman, and stare at the tantalizing activity so far away, and wish with all his heart that Father's business were more romantic. Mother meant more to Neale than Father did. He knew her better ... a little better. He had even some abstract ideas about her, that she was beautiful when she dressed up to go out in the afternoon. Mother fussed about his clothes more than was convenient, and insisted on baths, and washing hands before meals, but when he was sick, Mother read him stories, and let him leave the gas turned on in his room when he went to bed. Mother gave him pennies, too, and when Father was away on a business trip, he and Mother would eat alone together, and she would talk to him and ask him questions about school and play, and his boy friends. Neale didn't mind telling her things ... he liked Mother ... but he couldn't seem to manage to think of a great deal to tell her. It sounded foolish to talk about games to grown-ups. And games were really all that Neale cared about, almost all that he ever thought about. As to telling Mother other things, the few other things he did occasionally think about, why, there didn't seem to be anywhere to start. He'd have to begin "way back at the beginning" and now that Neale was ten years old, the beginning was too far back for him to lay hold of. As a matter of fact, she did not often ask about any of it, even in her distant careful way of asking. She just took good care of him, and had what he liked for supper, and put the kind of books he liked up in his room, and kept his buttons sewed on, and every night, till he was a big, big boy came into his room to kiss him good-night in his bed. She didn't say anything much then; just, "Have you enough covers?" maybe; or, "I believe I'd better open that window wider," and then, with the kiss, "Good-night, Neale." "Good-night, Mother." Then he turned over and nearly always went instantly to sleep.