Mr. Leigh went on in the voice a man will use when he is staring not through space, but across time: “Before you were born we were sure you would be a boy. She formed great plans for you. It is just as well that she did; it gave her the only happiness she ever got from you.” He raised his eyes to Tommy's, and with a half frown that was not of anger, said: “She was very extravagant in her gifts to you. She spent money lavishly, months before you were born, on what she thought you would love to have--large sums, all on paper, for we were very poor and had no money whatever to put aside for the day when you should need it. She told me many times that she did not wish you to have brothers or sisters, because she already loved you so much that she felt she could never love the others, and it would not be fair.” The old, old man paused. Then he added, softly, “She had her wish, my son!” Tommy felt very uncomfortable. His mother was coming to life in his heart. What for years had been a faint convention was now dramatizing in blood and tears before his very eyes. He felt more like a son than ever before, and--this was curious!--more like a son to his own father. And his own father continued in a monotone: “But being a bookkeeper at a bank and being very, very poor, the only inexpensive recreation I could think of was to keep your books for you. So I debited you with every penny I spent for you. You will find that the first item in that book was a lace cap which she bought for you at a special sale, for $2.69. I didn't scold her for extravagance. Instead, I gave up smoking. And--I have kept the cap, my son!” Tommy looked down, that he might not see his father's face. He read the first item. The ink was pale, but the writing was legible. It was as his father had said. And there were other items, all for baby clothes. He read them one after another, dully, until he came to: Doctor Wyman..................................$218.50 Funeral expenses in full......................$191.15 The old man seemed to know, in some mysterious way, which particular item Tommy was reading, for he said, suddenly, with a subtle note of apology in his voice: “I loved her, my son! I loved her! You cost me her life! You did not do it intentionally. But--but I felt you owed me something, and so I--charged you with the expense incurred. She would have--fought for you; but I held it against you and I wrote it down. And I wrote it down, in black and white, that in my grief I might have an added grief, my son!” Tommy looked up suddenly, and saw that his father was nodding toward the photograph on the table, nodding again and again. And Tommy felt himself becoming more and more a son--to both! He did not think concretely of any one thing, but he felt that he was enveloped by a life that does not die. That, after all, is the function of death.