"Then I wanted her to know that I don't intend to work after
school any more. I'll do my chores in the morning, but that's
all. From now on nobody can MAKE me do anything."

"I am not asking you to do anything but go to bed."

"I don't intend to come home tomorrow afternoon until I'm ready.
Or any afternoon. And if you don't like it--"

"Billy!" his mother cried; "Billy! go to bed!"

The boy obeyed.

Bill was fifteen when this took place. The impossible had
happened. He had challenged the master and had won. Even after he
had turned in, his father remained silent, feeling a secret
respect for him; mysteriously he had grown suddenly to manhood.
Martin was too mental to let anger express itself in violence
and, besides, strangely enough, he felt no desire to punish;
there was still the dislike he had always felt for him--his son
who was the son of this woman, but though he would never have
confessed aloud the satisfaction it gave him, he began to see
there was in the boy more than a little of himself.

"Poor Billy," his mother apologized; "he's tired."

"He didn't say he was tired--"

"Then he did say he was tired of working evenings."