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“You’re tired,” said the boy, abruptly. She opened her eyes at the tone, and forced a smile.

“No–or, yes, I am, a little. My head’s been aching. I wish to-night was over.” Suddenly she sighed. “It’s been a strain, hasn’t it?” she said. “I knew it would be, but I didn’t realize how hard! I just wanted to do something for them, you know, and this was all I could think of. And I’ve been wishing your father had been here; I don’t know what he will say. I don’t stop to think–when it’s the people I love–” she said artlessly. “I dread–” she began again, but left the sentence unfinished, after all, and looked out of the window. “I suspect you’re tired, too!” she went on brightly, after a moment. “I shan’t forget what a comfort it’s been to have you with me through this queer experience, Duncan. I know what it has cost you, my dear.”

“Comfort!” echoed Duncan. He tried to laugh, but the laugh broke itself off gruffly. He found himself catching her hand, putting his free arm boyishly about her shoulders. “I’m not fit to speak to you, Margaret!” he said huskily. “You’re–you’re the best woman I ever knew! I want you to know I’m sorry–sorry for it all–everything! And as for Dad, why, he’ll think what I think–that you’re the only person in the world who’d do all this for another woman’s kid!”

Mrs. Coppered had tried to laugh, too, as she faced him. But the tears came too quickly. She put her wet face against his rough overcoat and for a moment gave herself up to the luxury of tears.

“Carey,” said his wife, on a certain brilliant Sunday morning a month later, when he had been at home nearly a month. She put her head in at the library door. “Carey, will you do me a favor?”

He looked up to smile at her, in her gray gown and flowered hat, and she came in to take the seat opposite him at the broad table.

“I will. Where are you going?”

“Duncan and I are going to church, and you’re to meet us at the Gregorys’ for lunch,” she reminded him.

“Yes’m. And what do you two kids want? What’s the favor?”

“Oh!” She became serious. “You remember what I told you of our New York trip a month ago, Carey? The Penroses, you know?”

“I do.”

“Well, Carey, I’ve discovered that it has been worrying Duncan ever since you got home, because he thinks I’m keeping it from you.”

“Thinks you haven’t told me, eh?”

“Yes. Don’t laugh that way, Carey! Yes. And he asked me in the sweetest little way, a day or two ago, if I wouldn’t tell you all about it.”

“What did you do–box his young ears?”

“No.” Margaret’s eyes laughed, but she shook her head reprovingly. “I thought it was so DEAR of him to feel that way, yet never give you even a hint, that I–“

“Well?” smiled her husband, as she paused.

“Well,” hesitated Mrs. Coppered. And then in a little burst she added: “I said, ‘Duncan, if you ask me to I WILL tell him!'”

“And what do you think you gain by THAT, Sapphira?” said Carey, much amused.

“Why, don’t you see? Don’t you see it means EVERYTHING to him to have stood by me in this, and now to clear it all up between us! Don’t you see that it makes him one of us, in a way? He’s done his adored father a real service–“

“And his adored mother, too?”

His tone brought the happy tears to her eyes.

“And the favor?” he said presently.

“Oh! Well, you see, I’m supposed to be ‘fessing up the whole horrible business, Carey, and in a day or two I want you to thank him, just in some general way,–you’ll know how!–for looking out for me so well while you were away. Will you?”

“I will,” he promised slowly.

“He’s coming downstairs–so good-by!” said she. She came around the table to kiss him, and, suddenly smitten with a sense of youth and well-being and the glory of the spring morning, she added a little wistfully:

“I wonder what I’ve done to be so happy, Carey–I wonder what I’ve ever done to be so loved?”

“I wonder!” said Carey, smiling.