"Isn't there more than one kind of truth, mother?" he challenged her. "How can there be?" Again he shut his teeth and swallowed down his opposition. He was too immature to argue that there might be different facets to the selfsame truth. "Listen, mother," he began again, when he had proved to himself that he could rely upon his self-control. "As I say, I started out to be a minister, to be another Parson Wheeler in fact, if not in name. I know it has been your dream to hear me preach, some day or other. And I know how you have pinched and scrimped and worked, to give me the education that I was bound to need." "You have worked, too, Scott," she told him, in swift generosity. "You have tugged along and gone without things and worked hard, in your books and out of them. You know I have been proud of you; the credit for it isn't all mine, by any means." His young face flushed and softened. Unclasping his hands, he leaned across the table and laid his palm upon her fingers as they rested on the cloth beside her plate. Both palm and fingers were roughened and callous with hard work; but mother and son both were of that fast-vanishing class of folk who spell their _Education_ with the largest sort of capital letter. Their minds were alike, in that they both believed the work worth while, for the sake of all that it would be able to accomplish. "Thank you, mother," Scott said unsteadily. "I am glad you feel so, even if I don't deserve it." Then he steadied sharply and became practical. "So far, we've put it through, one way or the other," he went on. "Still, if I go in for the ministry," and his mother winced at the bald worldliness of his phrasing; "I shall have a year and a half more at college, and then three years of divinity school. We can do it, I suppose. For a matter of fact, I ought to be able to put it through alone, without a cent from you; but is it quite worth while? According to Professor Mansfield, if I keep steady, I can go straight from my degree into the laboratory as a paid demonstrator. It wouldn't be much pay, of course. Still, it would help along, and I could go on studying under him, all the time I was about it. By the time three years were over, the three years I would have to spend in the divinity school, I should be, ought to be, well upon my feet and walking towards a future of my own." His mother drew a long breath, as the swift torrent of words came to an end. Then,-- "And at the end of twenty years, my son? That is the real question." Scott's enthusiasm all went out of him. His assent came heavily. "Yes," he admitted. "Yes. I suppose that is the real question, mother. It all depends--" She looked up at him sharply, as if in haste to probe the limits of his hesitation. "Depends?" she echoed. "Upon the way you feel about it, mother." She shook her head.