“The Judge indulges in a little relentlessness now and then, himself.  He is not precisely what might be termed a mild man, if what we hear is correct.”

Mrs. Brice started.

“What have you heard?” she asked.

“Well, there was a gentleman on the steamboat who said that it took more courage to enter the Judge’s private office than to fight a Border Ruffian.  And another, a young lawyer, who declared that he would rather face a wild cat than ask Whipple a question on the new code.  And yet he said that the Judge knew more law than any man in the West.  And lastly, there is a polished gentleman named Hopper here from Massachusetts who enlightened me a little more.”

Stephen paused and bit his tongue.  He saw that she was distressed by these things.  Heaven knows that she had borne enough trouble in the last few months.

“Come, mother,” he said gently, “you should know how to take my jokes by this time.  I didn’t mean it.  I am sure the Judge is a good man,—­one of those aggressive good men who make enemies.  I have but a single piece of guilt to accuse him of.”

“And what is that?” asked the widow.

“The cunning forethought which he is showing in wishing to have it said that a certain Senator and Judge Brice was trained in his office.”

“Stephen—­you goose!” she said.

Her eye wandered around the room,—­Widow Crane’s best bedroom.  It was dimly lighted by an extremely ugly lamp.  The hideous stuffy bed curtains and the more hideous imitation marble mantel were the two objects that held her glance.  There was no change in her calm demeanor.  But Stephen, who knew his mother, felt that her little elation over her arrival had ebbed, Neither would confess dejection to the other.

“I—­even I—­” said Stephen, tapping his chest, “have at least made the acquaintance of one prominent citizen, Mr. Eliphalet D. Hopper.  According to Mr. Dickens, he is a true American gentleman, for he chews tobacco.  He has been in St. Louis five years, is now assistant manager of the largest dry goods house, and still lives in one of Miss Crane’s four-dollar rooms.  I think we may safely say that he will be a millionaire before I am a senator.”

He paused.

“And mother?”

“Yes, dear.”

He put his hands in his pockets and walked over to the window.

“I think that it would be better if I did the same thing.”

“What do you mean, my son—­”

“If I went to work,—­started sweeping out a store, I mean.  See here, mother, you’ve sacrificed enough for me already.  After paying father’s debts, we’ve come out here with only a few thousand dollars, and the nine hundred I saved out of this year’s Law School allowance.  What shall we do when that is gone?  The honorable legal profession, as my friend reminded me to-night, is not the swiftest road to millions.”

With a mother’s discernment she guessed the agitation, he was striving to hide; she knew that he had been gathering courage for this moment for months.  And she knew that he was renouncing thus lightly, for her sake an ambition he had had from his school days.