monster, a clown, a savage, a scarecrow, and all that. I tell you,
mother, there is but little to encourage me in the kind of life I'm
leading. Neither you nor Ad have tried to make anything of me."

Choking with tears, Mrs. Worthington said:

"You wrong me, Hugh; I do try to make something of you. You are a dear
child to me, dearer than the other, but I'm a weak woman, and 'Lina
sways me at will."

A kind word unmanned Hugh at once, and kneeling by his mother, he put
his arms around her, and asked again her care for Adah.

"Hugh," and Mrs. Worthington looked him steadily in the face, "is Adah
your wife, or Willie your child?"

"Great guns, mother!" and Hugh started to his feet as quick as if a bomb
had exploded at his side. "No! Are you sorry, mother, to find me better
than you imagined it possible for a bad boy like me to be?"

"No, Hugh, not sorry. I was only thinking that I've sometimes fancied
that, as a married man, you might be happier, even if you did lose
Spring Bank; and when this woman came so strangely, and you seemed so
interested, I didn't know, I rather thought--"

"I know," and Hugh interrupted her. "You thought, maybe, I raised Ned
when I was in New York; and, as a proof of said resurrection, Mrs. Ned
and Ned, Junior, had come with their baggage."

If the hair was golden instead of brown, and the eyes a different shade,