The unaccountable gray eyes of John Smiley Vanton looked straight at his mother as she talked to him. They saved her a good deal. In a way they offset the black hair and the snub nose which made him so strongly resemble, outwardly at least, his father. And there was something wonderfully cool and strong, to the mother, in the grayness of those boyish eyes. Granite colour.

“You aren’t telling me everything, mother,” said the boy.

She admitted it. In extenuation she promised that when he was older he should know the rest.

“You see, John, it really isn’t all mine to tell. If your father were dead it would be different. But there are some things which it is his right to tell you, and to be the only one to tell you, while he lives. Suppose he were to come back in a month or a year; then he could take it up with you himself, and that would be much fairer.”

He considered this and approved it.

“I ought to tell you this,” his mother added, “there is nothing that dishonours your father in what I have not told.”

“You know it all?” he asked. “Everything there is to tell?”

“I know all that there is to know,” she assured him, gravely.

[237]With this he was satisfied. They then spoke about his sister Keturah, who was two years younger. “You’d better,” John told his mother, “tell her just what you’ve told me. She’ll hear it, anyway. Guy and Mermaid are only ten and six and don’t matter much. I’ll talk to Guy.”

The masterful assumption of responsibility toward his younger brother pleased Mary Vanton. She checked an impulse to fold him to her. She offered her hand instead and he shook it, manifestly proud to conclude............