“And you’ll never talk about it any more!” he said violently.  “Because I cry about it sometimes, at night—­”

“Never again, my own son!” He lay back on his pillow with a breath of relief, but she kept her arms about him.

“Because you don’t know how a boy feels about his own mother!” he assured her.  Kneeling there, Martie wondered how she had come to forget his rights, forget his point of view for so long!  He would always seem a baby to her, but he was a person now, and he had his part in, and his influence upon, her life.  Suppose she had left him to cry out this secret hunger of his uncomforted; suppose, while she thought him contentedly playing with Billy and ’Lizabeth, he had been judging and blaming his mother?

While she knelt, thinking, he went to sleep.  But Lydia wondered what was keeping Martie awake.  The light in Martie’s room was turned up, and fell in a yellow oblong across the gravel; Lydia dozed and awakened, but the light was always there.

Morning broke softly in a fog which did not lift as the hours went by.  Malcolm was at home until after lunch, to which meal Teddy and Martie came downstairs unusually well dressed, Martie observing that she had errands down town.  Teddy kissed Grandpa good-bye as usual, and his mother kissed Grandpa, too, which was not quite usual, and clung with her white hands to his lapel.

“Teddy and I have shopping to do down town, Pa, and I’ve written Cliff a note!” she said.  Her father brightened.

“I’m glad you’re inclined to act sensibly, my dear!” he said, departing.  “I thought we’d hear a different story this morning!”

“What are you going down town for?” asked Lydia.  “I ought to have some rubber rings from Mallon’s.”

“I’m taking a lot of things down—­I have to pass the cleaner’s anyway,” answered Martie.  “I’ll get them, and send them.”

“Oh, bring them; they’ll go in your pocket,” Lydia said.  “Well, Ted, what’ll you do when these measles are over, and you have to go back to school?  You’ve put an awful good suit on him, Mart, just to play in.”

“He’ll change before he plays,” Martie answered, nervously smiling.  “Come, dear!”

“Don’t forget your things for the cleaner’s!” Lydia said, handing her her suitcase.  Martie surprised the older sister with a sudden kiss.

“Thanks, Lyd, dear!” she said.  “Good-bye!  Come, Ted!”

They went down through the quiet village, shabby after the burning of the summer.  Fog lay in wet, dark patches on the yellow grass, and in the thinning air was the good smell of wood fires.  Grapes were piled outside the fruit stores and pasted at a slant on Bonestell’s window was a neatly printed paper slip, “Chop Suey Sundae, 15c.”  Up on the brown hills the fog was rising.

They went to see Dr. Ben in his old offices opposite the Town Hall, and he gave Teddy a pink “sucker pill,” as he had given Martie years ago.