"I know it, Papa. I ought to be ashamed. Instead of me fighting you to go easy with the boy, this time it's you fighting me. If only he--he was the kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn't worry me so. When it comes to--to a girl--it's so different. It's just that I'm tired, Mosher. If anything was to go wrong after all these years of struggling for him--alone--" "Alone! Alone! Why, Sara! Shame! Time after time for punishing him I was a sick man!" "That's it! That's why so much of it was alone. I don't know why I should say it all to-night after--after so many years of holding in." "Say what?" "You meant well, God knows a father never meant better, but it wasn't the way to handle our boy's nature with punishments, and a quick temper like yours. Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it. That's why so much of it was--alone--so much that I had to contend with I was afraid to tell you, for fear--for fear--" "Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing? I don't say I'm not sometimes hasty--" "Time and time again--keeping it in from you--after the Chinese laundry that night after you--you whipped him so--you never knew the months of nights with him afterward--when I found out he liked that--stuff! Me alone with him--" "Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!" "It's all coming out in me now, Mosher. The strain. You never knew. That time you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths. You thought it was rheumatism. I knew what was the matter with me. Worry. The nights--Mosher. He liked it. I found it hid away in the toes of his gymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle. He--liked that stuff, Mosher. You didn't know that, did you?" "Liked what?" "It. The--the stuff from the Chinese laundry. Even after the Juvenile Court, when you thought it was all over after the whipping that night. He'd snuff it up. I found him twice on his bed after school. All druggy-like--half sleeping and half laughing. The gang at school he was in with--learned him--" "You mean--?" "It ain't so easy to undo with a day in Juvenile Court such a habit like that. You thought the court was the finish. My fight just began then!" "Why, Sara!" "You remember the time he broke his kneecap and how I fighted the doctors against the hypodermic and you got so mad because I wouldn't let him have it to ease the pain. I knew why it was better he should suffer than have it. _I knew!_ It was a long fight I had with him alone, Mosher. He liked that--stuff." "That--don't--seem possible."