After she had wiped the quick tears from her eyes, she read the few pages Jim had completed in his sprawling hand: "My father said to me, 'Jimmy, never make excuses. It's always too late for excuses.' "He said, 'A liar is a first cousin to a skunk. There isn't a worse coward than a liar.' "He said to me, 'Don't belly-ache. Stand up to your troubles like a man.' "My father said, 'Hang to what you undertake like a hound to a warm scent.' "He said to me, 'Life is made up of obeying. What you don't learn from me about that, the world will kick into you. The stars themselves obey a law. God must hate a law breaker.' "My father said, 'Somehow us Americans are quitters.' "My mother said my father said, 'I want Jimmy to go through college. I want him to marry young and have a big family.' "The thing my father said to me oftenest lately was, 'Jimmy, be clean about women. Some day you will know what I mean when I say that sex is energy. Keep yourself clean for your life work and your wife and children.'" Mrs. Manning read the pages over several times, then she laid the book down and stood staring out of the window. "Oh, he was a good man!" she whispered. "He was a good man! If Jimmy could have had him just two years more! I don't know how to teach him the things a man ought to know. A boy needs his father.----Oh, my love! My love----" Down below, Jim was leaning on the front gate. His chum, Phil Chadwick, was coming slowly up the street. The boys had not been near Jim since the funeral. Jim had become a person set apart from their boy world. No one appreciates the dignity of grief better than a boy, or underneath his awkwardness has a finer way of showing it. Phil's mother, to his unspeakable discomfort, had insisted now that he go call on Jim. Phil, his round face red with embarrassment, approached the gate a little sidewise. "Hello, Still!" he said casually. "Hello, Pilly!" replied Jim, blushing in sympathy. There was a pause, then said Phil, leaning on the gate, "Diana's got her pups. One's going to be a bulldog and two of 'em are setters. U-u-u--want to come over and see 'em and choose yours?" Jim's face was quivering. It was his father who had persuaded his mother that Jim ought to have one of Diana's pups. Mrs. Manning felt toward dogs much as she might have toward hyenas. "I--I--guess not today, Pilly!" Another long pause during which the lads swung the gate to and fro and looked in opposite directions. A locust shrilled from the elm tree. Finally Phil said: "Still, you gotta come up to the swimming hole. It'll do you good. He--he'd a wanted you to--to--to do what you could to cheer up. Come on, old skinny. Tell your mother. We'll keep away from the other kids. Come on. You gotta do something or you'll go nutty in your head." Jim turned and went into the house. His mother forestalled his request. "If Phil wants you to go swimming, dear, go on. It will do you good. Don't stay in too long."