Mrs. Parker looked up from her letters and considered him. The remark was reminiscent, some way, and she sent her trained memory to the card index of her mind. He looked even younger and fairer than usual with his convalescent pallor and his bandaged head, his pale blue silk pajamas and his blue brocaded dressing gown--endearingly like the little boy of eleven who had-- That was it! Peter with a broken leg in a cast, Peter sending a telephone summons and then a beguiling little note and then a maid to bring the small sweetheart of the moment, and all these failing, making the calm statement to his mother--“I believe you’ll have to go and get her for me!” She had gone, amusedly, and rather annoyed at herself, but the nurse was very particular that he shouldn’t bring his temperature up by fretting.... A pink, thick, unpleasant little girl, she had privately thought her, while she overawed the very ordinary mother and brought the child back in triumph for a half hour’s visit. “You sent me for a girl once before, Peter, do you remember? When you were eleven, and had broken your leg?” “Did I, Eugenia? Yes, of course I did--the little fat Dorothy Something-or-other--the Sheba of the hour! And you got her, I remember distinctly.” “I got her, Peter,” she shaded the pronoun. “But this, considering ages and circumstances, is a rather more difficult order!” “Wouldn’t you like to get Glen Darrow for me, Madame President?” She straightened the magazines on the table into a trim pile, evening the edges carefully. “Yes, certainly, Peter,” she said pleasantly. “I will be very glad to ask her, of course.” “Come here!” It was imperious, impertinent, cajoling. “Look me in the eye, Madame President! Wouldn’t you like to get Glen Darrow for me?” “My son,” said his mother huskily, her keen gaze dimming for an instant, “there’s nothing in the world I’d like so much.” “_’Atta_ girl, Eugenia,” said her only child cordially. “You’re a good egg. You’n me both.” She considered him gravely. “You are serious?” “Heaven helping me, Mrs. Parker, I shall never be serious, but I want Glen Darrow more than I can possibly express to you without becoming unduly lyrical.” She regarded him in silence. Never, since his tiny childhood, had he given her so much happiness as in the weeks following her arrival at the Bella Vista. He was taking an interest which all his persiflage could not disguise in his mill; he had fallen in love with a fine and worthwhile young woman; and in the crowded hours of glorious life which she had so ardently desired for him he had shown his mettle. He had faced hideous danger blithely and gallantly, risking his life, very nearly giving his life--that happy and heedless life which she had deplored as worthless--for mill workers of whose existence he had been unaware a few weeks earlier.