w in the arc of the blue-black
sky, Jerry made out the figure of her mother, standing near the rough
bench that overlooked the valley.

"Mother!"

"Jerry, child, and in your bare feet!"

"I heard you out here. Isn't it dreadfully late? Can't you sleep?
Mother, look at me," for Mrs. Westley had kept her face averted.
"Mother, darling, why do you look so--sort of--sad?" Jerry's voice was
reproachful. "We're so happy now that we are together, aren't we? And it
_will_ be nice to have lots of things and Little-Dad won't ever have to
worry and----"

Mrs. Travis lifted her hand suddenly and laid it across Jerry's lips.
"Child, I am not sad. I have been out here fighting away forever the
foolish fears that have stalked by my side since you were a very little
girl. Some day, when you're a mother, you'll know how I've felt--how
I've dreaded facing this moment! How often I've sat with you and watched
the baby robins make their first flight from the nest and have laughed
at the fussy mother robin scolding and worrying up in a nearby
branch----"

"But, mamsey, you've always told me how the mother robin _pushes_ the
little ones out of the nest to make them _know_ that they can fly!"

Mrs. Travis accepted the rebuke in silence. Jerry slipped her hand into
her mother's. Her mother held it close.

"Jerry, dear, I've never told you much about myself because I could not
do that without telling you of your own father. I was a very lonely
little girl; I had no brothers or sisters--no near relatives. My mother
died when I was eight years old, and a housekeeper--good soul--brought
me up. My father was a professor of chemistry in Harvard, as you know,
and he was a queer man and his friends were peculiar, too--not the sort
that was much company for a young girl. But I was very fond of my father
and I was very content with my simple life until I met Craig Winton. He
was so different from anyone else who had ever crossed our threshold
that I fell in love with him at once. My father died suddenly and Craig
Winton asked me to marry him. It was the maddest folly--he had nothing
except his inventive genius and he should never have tied himself to
domestic responsibilities; they were always--such as they were--like a
dreadful yoke to his spirit. But we were happy, oh, we were _happy_ in a
wonderful, unreal way. Sometimes we didn't have enough to eat, but he
always had so much faith in what he was going to do that _that_ somehow,
kept us going