"I guess you'll stop over!" laughed the neighbor. "I know the signs." "I'll telephone to Sheelah," Murray's mother decided, aloud, "then I'll run along back to Cicely's. I've always wanted to see Irving in that play." But it was seven o'clock before she telephoned. She was to have been at home at half-past seven. "That you, Sheelah? I'm not coming out to-night--not until morning. I'm going to the theatre. Tell Murray I'll bring him a present. Put an extra blanket over him if it comes up chilly." She did not hang up the receiver at once, holding it absently at her ear while she considered if she ought to say anything else to Sheelah. Hence she heard distinctly an indignant exclamation. "Will you hear that, now! An' the boy that certain! 'She's promised,' he says, an' he'll kape on 'She's-promising' for all o' me, for it's not tell him I will! He can go to slape in his poor little boots, expectin' her to kape her promise!" The woman with the receiver at her ear uttered a low exclamation. She had not forgotten the Promise, but it had not impressed her as anything vital. She had given it merely to comfort Little Silly when he cried. That he would regard it as sacred--that it _was_ sacred--came to her now with the forcible impact of a blow. And, oddly enough, close upon its heels came a remembrance picture--of a tiny child playing with his soldiers on the floor. The sunlight lay over him--she could see it on his little hair and face. She could hear him talking to the "Captain soldier." She had at the time called it a sermon, with a text, and laughed at the child who preached it. She was not laughing now. "Lissen, Cappen Sojer, an' I'll teach you a p'omise. A p'omise--a p'omise--why, when anybody p'omises, _they do it!_" Queer how plainly she could hear Little Silly say that and could see him sitting in the sun! Just the little white dress he had on--tucks in it and a dainty edging of lace! She had recognized Sheelah's maxims and laughed. Sheelah was stuffing the child with notions. "If anybody p'omises, they do it." It seemed to come to her over the wire in a baby's voice and to strike against her heart. This mother of a little son stood suddenly self-convicted of a crime--the crime of faithlessness. It was not, she realized with a sharp stab of pain, faith in _her_ the little child at the other end of the line was exercising, but faith in the Promise. He would keep on "She-promising" till he fell asleep in his poor little boots-- "Oh!" breathed in acute distress the mother of a little son. For all unexpectedly, suddenly, her house built of cards of carelessness, flippancy, thoughtlessness, had fallen round her. She struggled among the flimsy ruins.