It was Will's second son, little Van. He said his mother was at home, and, taking my hand, he showed me around the cottage to the back door. The boy pounded on the door, and May came to see what was the matter. "Is that you, Van?" she asked, as if she expected me. "Will said he saw you the other day." She did not invite me in, but the little boy held open the door and I walked into the kitchen. The breakfast things were piled up in the sink, unwashed. A boiler of clothes was on the fire, and May had her sleeves rolled up, ready to begin the wash. Her arms were as thin as pipe-stems, and behind her glasses I saw deep circles of blue flesh. She had grown older and thinner in the three years since she and Will left my house for good. "Will's gone to the city," May remarked. "He don't look strong, May. It made me feel bad to see him so--changed, not a bit like himself." She seemed to bridle a little at this. "He hasn't been real well since he had the fever at Montauk. He was reinfected at the hospital, and nearly died. When he got out he tried farming down in Texas, but his strength didn't come back as we expected, and the climate was too hot for him. So we came North to see if he could get some easier work." "How are the children?" I asked, seeing a strange baby face peep around the corner of the clothes-basket. "We lost the baby boy while Will was at Montauk. Another little girl has come since then. We call her Sarah." She waited a moment, and then asked hesitatingly:-- "How's your Sarah? She didn't look well when I saw her last." "No--she's been delicate some time--since our boy died, last summer. She's gone to Europe with the girls for a change." Then we were silent; there was not much more we could say without touching the quick. But at last I burst out:-- "May, why wouldn't you take that money I sent you while Will was away at the war?" "We could manage without it. It was kind of you, though. You have always been kind, Van!" "You might have known it would make us happy to have you take it. It was only what I owed to the country, too, seeing that I was so placed I couldn't go to Cuba. I wanted then to leave everything and enlist. But it wouldn't have been fair to others. I sent some men in my place, though." Perhaps it sounded a little like apologizing. May listened with a smile on her lips that heated me. "You are just like that preacher!" I exclaimed. "You can see no good in folks unless it's _your_ kind of good. Don't you believe I have got some real patriotism in me?" "It's hard to think of Van Harrington, the new Senator, as a patriot," she laughed back. "Those men you sent to the front must have come in handy for the election!" I turned red at her little fling about the Senatorship: my managers _had_ worked that company I equipped for all it was worth.