Thinking of him, she felt in fancy the pangs
of birth, and in her bed at night relived with him his boyhood in the town
and built again her plans for his future. In the day time she laughed at
herself and said tenderly, "You are an old fool."
Brutally and frankly Sam told her of the thing he had heard on the station
platform, looking past her at the pine trees and gripping the veranda
rail. From the dead land there came again the smell of the new growth as
it had come to him on the road before the revelation at the railroad
station.
"Something kept telling me not to go away," he said. "It must have been in
the air--this thing. Already these evil crawling things were at work. Oh,
if only all the world, like you and Telfer and some of the others here,
had an appreciation of the sense of privacy."
Mary Underwood laughed quietly.
"I was more than half right when, in the old days, I dreamed of making you
a man at work upon the things of the mind," she said. "The sense of
privacy indeed! What a fellow you have become! John Telfer's method was
better than my own. He has given you the knack of saying things with a
flourish."
Sam shook his head.
"Here is something that cannot be faced down with a laugh," he said
stoutly.
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