curtains swayed on and no Mark appeared. Then he suddenly was aware of
a white face confronting him at the downstairs window directly opposite
to him, white and scared and--was it accusing? And suddenly he began to
tremble. Not all the events of the night had made him tremble, but now
he trembled, it was Mark's mother, and she had pink rims to her eyes,
and little damp crimples around her mouth and eyes for all the world
like Aunt Saxon's. She looked--she looked exactly as though she had not
slept all night. Her nose was thin and red, and her eyes had that awful
blue that eyes get that have been much washed with tears. The soft
waves of her hair drooped thinly, and the coil behind showed more
threads of silver than of brown in the morning sun that shot through
the branches of the cherry tree. She had a frightened look, as if Billy
had brought some awful news, or as if it was his fault, he could not
tell which, and he began to feel that choking sensation and that
goneness in the pit of his stomach that Aunt Saxon always gave him when
she looked frightened at something he had done or was going to do.
Added to this was that sudden premonition, and a memory of that
drooping still figure in the dark up on the mountain.

Mrs. Carter sat down the candle on a shelf and raised the window:

"Is that you Billy?" she asked, and there were tears in her voice.

Billy had a brief appalling revelation of Mothers the world over. Did
all Mothers--women--act like that when they were _fools_? Fools is
what he called them in his mind. Yet in spite of himself and his rage
and trembling he felt a sudden tenderness for this crumply, tired,
ghastly little pink rimmed mother, apprehensive of the worst as was
plain to see. Billy recalled like a flash the old man at the Blue Duck
saying, "I'm sorry for his ma. I used to go to school with her." He