"We ain't rich yet."

"Promise me, Harry, if we are--promise me that, Harry. It's the only
promise I ask out of it. Whatever comes, if we win or lose, our boy can
have college if he wants."

He held her close, his head up and gazing beyond her.

"With a rich daddy my boy can go to college like the best of 'em."

"Promise me that, Harry."

"I promise, Millie."

He released her then, feeling for an envelope in an inner pocket, and,
standing there above the disarrayed dinner-table, executed some rapid
figures across the back of it.

She stood for a moment regarding him, hands pressed against the sting of
her cheeks, tears flowing down over her smile. Then she took up the plate
of cloying fritters and tiptoed out, opening softly the door to a slit of
a room across the hall. In the patch of light let in by that opened door,
drawn up before a small table, face toward her ravaged with recent tears,
and lips almost quivering, her son lay in the ready kind of slumber youth
can bring to any woe. She tiptoed up beside him, placing the plate of
fritters back on a pile of books, let her hands run lightly over his hair,
kissed him on each swollen lid.

"My son! My little boy! My little boy!"