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Old Martha was a firm believer in love at first sight (otherwise she might never have been a wet-nurse), and often, when the Poor Boy came home from some great gathering of people, she would ask him, “Did it happen to yez?” And he knew what she meant, and teased her a little sometimes, saying that he wasn’t “just quite sure.” (And he wasn’t–always.)

One day the world crashed about old Martha’s ears. The Poor Boy stood up in the court and said, “Not guilty,” in his clear, ringing voice. But they didn’t believe her child, her angel, and when they sent him to prison she tore her white hair, and beat her head against the wall of her bedroom until she fell senseless. And indeed it was true that Justice, the light woman, had again been brought to bed of a miscarriage. But who was to believe that, when Justice’s whole family and her doctor gave out that the child was clean-run and full time? If any believed there were not many. The Poor Boy was a poor boy, indeed, and it seemed to him (trying so very hard not to go mad) that his life was all over.

As a matter of fact, it was getting ready at last to begin.

II

One day old Martha received the following letter:

“MARTHA, DEARIE: I didn’t do it. But only you believe that, and I. You will go to Joyous Guard, for love of me, and put the cottage in order. I shall live there when I come out, and you shall take care of me. But are you too old? Can you do the cooking and the housework for us two? It’s I that will split the wood and carry the coals. If the work is too heavy, dearie, you must choose some one to help you. Some one who will never come where I am, whom I shall never have to look in the face. For it’s you only that I can look in the face now, or bear to have look in mine. My more than mother, God bless you, and believe me always, with all my love, your

“POOR BOY.”

“Choose some one to help her!” Old Martha snorted. “Not if I was dead in my coffin and him wantin’ only me,” she said, “I’d rise up and boil my lamb’s eggs for him.”

But it was not alone that she sped northward to that great valley in the mountains, which the Poor Boy had called Joyous Guard, after Launcelot’s domain. She took with her the Poor Boy’s butler, a man of rare executive ability, and a young architect for whom the Poor Boy had had belief and affection. These three camped out in the cottage, and sent forth electric messages to plumbers, and upholsterers, and cabinet-makers. If her boy was to live in a tiny stone cottage, old Martha would see to it that that cottage should be a gem. She could spend what she pleased. She had been paid no wages since the Poor Boy’s coming of age. Bonds with gilt edges were given to her on that day, deeds to two houses in which gentlefolk lived, and at all the stores where the Poor Boy had credit she had credit, just as his own mother would have had. She was a rich woman in her own right. And the young architect knew that, and in his heart was amazed at always finding her on the floor in a lake of lather, crooning as she scrubbed.

“Martha,” he said once, “you’re a bird. I wish I’d met you when I was a baby.”

And she answered:

“Don’t be thrackin’ mud into the study.” And then, “Mister Cotter,” she said, “if ye have a heart in your body, put it into the furnace flue. It was always a bad egg for drawin’, and betimes the snow will lie six feet deep in the valley.”