“But, mother—­”

“I couldn’t stand it, I tell you,” she said, the tears now bursting and flowing down over her cheeks.

“Why, Millie, you mustn’t cry!  I ’ain’t seen you cry in years.  Millie! my God!  I can’t get my thoughts together!  Me to own a show after all these years; me to—­”

“Don’t you think it means something to me, too, Harry?”

“I can’t lose, Millie.  Even if this country gets drawn into the war, there’s a mint of money in that show as I see it.  It’ll help the people.  The people of this country need to have their patriotism tickled.”

“All my life, Harry, I’ve wanted a gold-mesh bag with a row of sapphires and diamonds across the top—­”

“I’m going to make it the kind of show that ‘Dixie’ was a song—­”

“And a gold-colored bird-of-paradise for a black-velvet hat, all my life, Harry—­”

“With Alma Zitelle in the part—­”

“Is it her picture I found in your drawer the other day, Harry, cut out from a Sunday newspaper?”

“One and the same.  I been watching her.  There’s a world of money in that woman, whoever she is.  She’s eccentric and they make her play straight, but if I could get hold of her—­My God!  Millie, I—­I can’t believe things!”

She rose, coming round to lay her arms across his shoulders.

“We’ll be rich, maybe, Harry—­”

“I’ve picked the winners for the other fellows every time, Mil.”

“Anyhow, it’s worth the gamble, Harry.”

“I got a nose for what the people want.  I’ve never been able to prove it from a high stool, but I’ll show ’em now—­by God!  I’ll show ’em now!” He sprang up, pulling the white table-cloth awry and folding her into his embrace.  “I’ll show ’em.”

She leaned from him, her two hands against his chest, head thrown back and eyes up to him.

“We—­can educate our boy, then, Harry, like—­like a rich man’s son.”

“We ain’t rich yet.”

“Promise me, Harry, if we are—­promise me that, Harry.  It’s the only promise I ask out of it.  Whatever comes, if we win or lose, our boy can have college if he wants.”

He held her close, his head up and gazing beyond her.

“With a rich daddy my boy can go to college like the best of ’em.”

“Promise me that, Harry.”

“I promise, Millie.”

He released her then, feeling for an envelope in an inner pocket, and, standing there above the disarrayed dinner-table, executed some rapid figures across the back of it.

She stood for a moment regarding him, hands pressed against the sting of her cheeks, tears flowing down over her smile.  Then she took up the plate of cloying fritters and tiptoed out, opening softly the door to a slit of a room across the hall.  In the patch of light let in by that opened door, drawn up before a small table, face toward her ravaged with recent tears, and lips almost quivering, her son lay in the ready kind of slumber youth can bring to any woe.  She tiptoed up beside him, placing the plate of fritters back on a pile of books, let her hands run lightly over his hair, kissed him on each swollen lid.