No, she was not as young as that. When Dirk next paid one of his rare visits to the farm she called him into her bedroom—the cool, dim shabby bedroom with the old black walnut bed in which she had lain as Pervus DeJong’s bride more than thirty years ago. She had on a little knitted jacket over her severe white nightgown. Her abundant hair was neatly braided in two long plaits. She looked somehow girlish there in the dim light, her great soft eyes gazing up at him. “Dirk, sit down here at the side of my bed the way you used to.” “I’m dead tired, Mother. Twenty-seven holes of golf before I came out.” “I know. You ache all over—a nice kind of ache. I used to feel like that when I’d worked in the fields all day, pulling vegetables, or planting.” He was silent. She caught his hand. “You didn’t like that. My saying that. I’m sorry. I didn’t say it to make you feel bad, dear.” “I know you didn’t, Mother.” “Dirk, do you know what that woman who writes the society news in the Sunday _Tribune_ called you to-day?” “No. What? I never read it.” “She said you were one of the _jeunesse dorée_.” Dirk grinned. “Gosh!” “I remember enough of my French at Miss Fister’s school to know that that means gilded youth.” “Me! That’s good! I’m not even spangled.” “Dirk!” her voice was low, vibrant. “Dirk, I don’t want you to be a gilded youth, I don’t care how thick the gilding. Dirk, that isn’t what I worked in the sun and cold for. I’m not reproaching you; I didn’t mind the work. Forgive me for even mentioning it. But, Dirk, I don’t want my son to be known as one of the _jeunesse dorée_. No! Not my son!” “Now, listen, Mother. That’s foolish. If you’re going to talk like that. Like a mother in a melodrama whose son’s gone wrong. . . . I work like a dog. You know that. You get the wrong angle on things, stuck out here on this little farm. Why don’t you come into town and take a little place and sell the farm?” “Live with you, you mean?” Pure mischievousness. “Oh, no. You wouldn’t like that,” hastily. “Besides, I’d never be there. At the office all day, and out somewhere in the evening.” “When do you do your reading, Dirk?” “Why—uh——” She sat up in bed, looking down at the thin end of her braid as she twined it round and round her finger. “Dirk, what is this you sell in that mahogany office of yours? I never did get the hang of it.” “Bonds, Mother. You know that perfectly well.” “Bonds.” She considered this a moment. “Are they hard to sell? Who buys them?” “That depends. Everybody buys them—that is . . .” “I don’t. I suppose because whenever I had any money it went back into the farm for implements, or repairs, or seed, or stock, or improvements. That’s always the way with a farmer—even on a little truck farm like this.” She pondered again a moment. He fidgeted, yawned. “Dirk DeJong—Bond Salesman.” “The way you say it, Mother, it sounds like a low criminal pursuit.”