prayer.
She had given all she had for him; his young honour, taking no thought
for disastrous consequences, demanded that he should give up at least
this one thing for her. He pushed back his chair, went around the table
and laid one hand upon her shoulder.

"I do know, mother dear. As far as I can, I will do my best to carry
them all out."

He bent above her in a brief, awkward caress, the caress of a man whose
life has been too hard and too narrow to give him opportunity to
perfect himself in the arts of masculine endearments. Then, leaving his
breakfast half uneaten, he went away upstairs and shut the door of his
own room behind him. A long hour later, he came down the stairs again,
and went away in search of Catie.

He hoped Catie would listen to him, and understand him and his crisis;
but, all the time he hoped, he was conscious of a sneaking fear lest
she would not. Scott loved to talk things out, and Catie, when she was
not too busy otherwise, was a good listener. Nevertheless, her
comprehensions were concrete and very, very finite.

CHAPTER TWO

To all seeming, there always had been a Catie in Scott Brenton's life,
always had been a Catie for him to seek in seasons of domestic stress
or discipline. Indeed, his first memory of her was inextricably mingled
with the recollections of an early spanking. Scott was naturally a good
child, and Mrs. Brenton, as a rule, spanked cunningly, but very seldom.
Now and then, she felt that circumstances justified the deed.

Scott, seven years old and inventive withal, had been locked up in the
house alone, one day, while his mother went to a particularly
attractive funeral with carriages enough for even the outside circle of
the mourners. One such mourner failing, she had been bidden to the
vacant seat in the rearmost carriage, and her absence had been
prolonged unduly. She came home, expecting to find Scott wailing loudly
for his missing mother. Instead, she found him playing camp-out Indian,
as he called it, with her best bed by way of wickiup, and the wickiup
was provisioned lavishly and stickily from the resources of the closet
where she kept her jams.

Prudence and frugality demanded that Mrs. Brenton should remove her
best clothes, before she essayed to administer justice at short range.
Scott, left to himself, played on contentedly the while, until his camp
was rudely invaded by a foe clad in a second-best petticoat and a
shoulder shawl, and armed with a