"No, son--I was waiting for you." He laid his fresh young face against hers, insisting that she must go to bed at once; helping her upstairs awkwardly, laughing as he went--telling her she was the sweetest girl he ever knew and his best sweetheart--kissing her pale cheeks as they climbed the steps together to his room. She had determined, as she sat by the window, to talk to him of what she had overheard him say to Sue, and of her anxiety over Richard's revelations, but his joyous kiss had robbed her of the power. She would wait for another time--she said to herself--not to-night, when he was so happy. "Anybody at Sue's, Ollie?" she asked, lighting his candle. "Only the boys and girls--Tom Pitts, Charley Bowman, Nellie Talbot, and one or two others. The Colonel came in just before I left." "But the Colonel will be home to-morrow, will he not?" she asked, quickly, as if something forgotten had been suddenly remembered. "Yes--think so--" answered Oliver, taking off his coat and hanging it over the chair--"because he was just up from Pongateague. He and Major Pitts got thirty-seven woodcock in two days. Tom wants me to go down with him some day next week." A shade of anxiety crossed the mother's face. "What did you tell him, son?" She moved a chair nearer the bureau and sat down to watch him undress, as she had always done since the day she first tucked him into his crib. "Oh, I said I would ask you." He was loosening his cravat, his chin thrown up, the light of the candle falling over his well-knit shoulders and chest outlined through his white shirt. "Better not go, Ollie--you've been away so much lately." "Oh, dearie," he protested, in a tone as a child would have done, "what does a day or two matter? Be a darling old mother and let me go. Tom has a gun for me, and Mr. Talbot is going to lend us his red setter. Tom's sister is going, too, and so are her cousins. Just think, now, I haven't had a day in the country for a coon's age." His arms were round her neck now. He seemed happier over the excuse to caress her than anxious about her possible refusal. She loosened one of his hands and laid it on her cheek. "No holidays, son? Why you had two last week, when you all went out to Stemmer's Run," she said, looking up into his face, his hand still in hers. "Yes, but that was fishing!" he laughed as he waved an imaginary rod in his hands. "And the week before, when you spent the day at Uncle Tilghman's?" she continued, smiling sadly at him, but with the light of an ill-concealed admiration on her face.