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His face relaxed and he grinned. This mock terror of hers was winning, and as she twinkled up at him she was very young, younger than he—an urchin eaught at mischief red-handed. "Madelaine Hamill, I've a good mind to spank you!" he said.

"Ho, you're not big enough!"

Giggling at this absurdity, they ascended the stairs together. "I hope you're not in a hurry to get to bed," Mrs. Hamill remarked en route, "because I have a lot of things I want to say."

"Hum. Just try to get me to bed till you've said 'em!"

But when they were established in Mrs. Hamill's dressing room, she stretched at full length on a wistaria taffeta sofa, Jock seated near in a wistaria chair as incongruous to him as lace would be on a football jersey, their cheerfulness dropped from them and they were grave and constrained. He spoke first, after a protracted wait. "Maybe you'd like to go to bed yourself, mother? You must be dog-tired. We can talk it over in the morning—I mean later—if you'd rather."

"I wouldn't rather," said Mrs. Hamill. "I want to talk it over now.

"Silly!" introspectively. "Twelve years—and now I don't even want to wait a minute——"

Jack lunged forward in his chair, gripping its arms. "Do you mean to say you've been doing this—" The break in his sentence encompassed all the things he had witnessed since he entered the house—"for twelve years?"

Mrs. Hamill nodded. "Ever since a year or two after your father died. I—he didn't leave any money, Jock. Not a cent. I've always told you he did, but he didn't. We were pitifully poor when he was alive