As for poor Mrs. Kindred, when she saw that cap go up in the air, of course you know what happened to her. But she would not look away, even to cry, and sat gazing at that tall figure in grey and drawing the long sobbing breaths that bear such a very mixed freight. She even forgot to pull the check string, and would have been driven straight on if Magnus, in a voice stern enough for the first captain, had not bidden the driver stop. And it seemed so natural and fitting that her boy should pay her fare that when he pulled out a hidden quarter and passed it up to the driver no qualms of fear that he might be "skinned" for so doing disturbed her mind. Of course cadets have no more business with pocket money than they have with pockets, but she did not know that. Magnus got one hand on his arm, gripping it with the other hand as if he thought she might run away; and drew her rapidly along through the nearest byways to a nook among rocks and trees that he deemed his own private discovery. Once there, hidden away in the sweet, cool shadow, with the river plashing softly far below, and a wood thrush ringing his chimes near by, Cadet Corporal Kindred threw his cap down on the grass, put his arms round his mother, and hid his face in her neck as if he had been six years old. It was just what the mother needed. For at first sight, this tall, splendid fellow with braid and buttons and chevrons, straight as a line, and with all the saucy curls cut away, laid her under a spell. Except the first meeting kiss she had had hardly a sign from him unless that grip of her hand. But now, with her boy in her arms, he was her boy still, and she quite too happy for this lower world. "Child," she said at last, "what have they done with your hair? Have you been sick?" Then Magnus looked up and laughed; the old shine in his eyes making her heart leap. "Regulations," he said. "I am nothing any more but a bundle of regulations, mother. Might about as well be a convict labeled 379." "Regulations!" Mrs. Kindred repeated. "I wish I had the making of them." "I wish you had, mother. And there are some three hundred and odd more boys here, who would confidingly hand the job over to you. Then we'd have pie every day for dinner and cake for supper, Saturday in the middle of the week, and no Monday morning recitations." "But Magnus," said Mrs. Kindred, bewildered over this very mixed lot of grievances, "don't you have cake for supper?" "Now and then a mysterious compound which goes by that name," said Magnus. "We are having it scientifically analysed to see whether it is all new-process granite, or whether one part mud comes in." But here the innocent, perplexed face was too much for him. He almost shouted with fun, tossing his cap up higher than it had ever been. "You blessed mother!" he said. "You haven't changed one bit--not a pin's point. There was one on your shoulder just now to scratch me, exactly as there always used to be."