"Mother," said Jock haltingly, painfully, "I came mighty near coming home--for good--this time."
His mother turned and searched his face in the dim light.
"What was it, Jock?" she asked, quite without fuss.
The slim young figure in the jumping juvenile clothes stirred and tried to speak, tried again, formed the two words: "A--girl."
Emma McChesney waited a second, until the icy, cruel, relentless hand that clutched her very heart should have relaxed ever so little. Then, "Tell me, sonny boy," she said.
"Why, Mother--that girl--" There was an agony of bitterness and of disillusioned youth in his voice.
Emma McChesney came very close, so that her head, in the pert little close-fitting hat, rested on the boy"s shoulder. She linked her arm through his, snug and warm.
"That girl--" she echoed encouragingly.
And, "That girl," went on Jock, taking up the thread of his grief, "why, Mother, that--girl--"
THE END