Mrs. Anderson looked a little reflective.  Now that her son had taken a proper attitude with regard to her sister-woman, she began to feel a little critical license herself.  “I will admit that she has little mannerisms which are not exactly agreeable and must grate on Dr. Gregg,” said she.  As she spoke she seemed to hear again the smacking of the lips over the pound-cake.  Then she looked scrutinizingly at her son.  “But,” she said, “I do believe she was right, Randolph, about your looks.”

“Nonsense,” said Randolph, laughing.

It was a warm night.  After supper they both went out on the front porch.  Mrs. Anderson sat gazing at her son from between the folds of a little, white lace kerchief which she wore over her head, to guard against possible dampness.

“Randolph,” said she, after a while.

“What is it, mother, dear?”

“Do you feel well?”

“Of course I feel well.  Why?”

“You look too well to be natural,” said she, slowly.

“Mother, what an absurdity!”

“It is so,” said she.  “I had not noticed it until Mrs. Gregg spoke, but I see it now.  I don’t know where my eyes have been.  You look too well.”

Randolph laughed.  “Now, mother, don’t you think that sounds foolish?”

Mrs. Anderson continued to regard him with an expression of maternal love and severity, which pierced externals more keenly than an X-ray.  “No,” said she, “I do not think it is foolish.  You look too well to be natural.  You look this minute as young in your face as you did when I had you in petticoats.”

Randolph laughed loudly at that, but his mother was quite earnest.

She was not satisfied, and continued arguing the matter until she became afraid of the increasing dampness and went into the house, and the son drew a breath of relief.  The mother little dreamed, with all her astuteness, of what was really transpiring.  She did not know that when she had seated herself beside her son on the porch she had displaced with her gentle, elderly materiality the sweetest phantom of a beloved young girl.  She did not know that when she entered the house the delicate, evanescent thing returned swifter than thought itself, and filled with the sweet presence that vacuum in her son’s heart which she herself had never filled, and nestled there through a delicious hour of the summer night.  She did not dream, as she sat by the window, staring out drowsily into the soft shadows and heard no murmur from her son on the porch, that in reality the silence of his soul was broken by words and tones which she had never heard from his lips, although she had brought him into the world.