he
mother strict orders not to touch him but, when she saw her Willie there
before her, the great love she bore him made her forget everything. She
threw her arms about him and before he could say a word, had given him a
hug and a hearty kiss. It was almost as bad as the doctor's examination.
Willie writhed in pain, but he uttered no complaint.

"O my dear, dear boy," exclaimed Mrs. Daly, seeing his efforts at
suppressing the pain. "The nurse told me not to touch you, and here I've
almost squeezed the life out of you, and made you suffer in every part
of your body."

His suffering was so intense that it was some minutes before Bill could
reply to her. At length he said, "O mother, I'm so glad to see you. It
seems so long since I left the house yesterday and, mother, life seems
so different."

This exhausted him. He just lay still, his mother's hand on his
forehead, and her eyes looking into his. In his weakened state, tears
soon gathered, not of pain, but of gratefulness, of emotion from a high
resolve to bury the old Bill Daly and to live anew.

By degrees they began to talk. She told him of the night before, and the
meeting with the boy at the office below, and his kindness to her. Bill
was all interest. She could not recall the boy's name and she was a poor
hand at description. Bill mentioned a number of his corner chums. The
Club boys did not even enter his head. "Think hard, mother, and see if
you can't get it. I want to know. I didn't think anyone cared so much
for me."

"O yes, now I remember," she replied, "When Father Boone came in he
called him Frank."

That was too much for Bill. He thought of a thousand things all at once.
His mother, only half understanding, continued: "He was one of the
nicest boys I ever saw. When we got to our house, he took me by the hand
and says, 'Don't worry, Mrs. Daly. You've got one of the finest boys in
the world, and he'll be home with you soon,' and his voice as kind and
as tender as a woman's, God bless him!"

Bill was still thinking. This was the boy he had provoked to fight, the
one who had had to take the brunt of the director's anger! Mrs. Daly was
rambling on when Bill looked up and asked her if Father Boone had been
around.

She was not a little surprised. "Didn't you know about him, dear?" she
inquired. Then she proceeded to tell everything in detail, from the time
that Father Boone brought her the news until he closed the taxi door and
sent her home with Fran