"But suppose you find my powers real?" she asked, trembling with eagerness.
He hesitated. "Then--well--if I believed in your powers I would still object to your earning money with--by means of your--your Voices. I've got to make my own way in the world, and from this moment!"
She read an unmitigable opposition in his eyes and sadly said, "You'll come here to sleep, won't you?"
He conceded so much, though reluctantly. "Yes, I'll sleep here, but as soon as I make a raise of any work I intend to pay for my board. As for carfare, I guess my junk will have to go into 'hock.'" He rose. "You see, I won a silver mug and a watch by being useful to the team. It's them to 'Uncle Jake's,'" he ended, with a return to the college youth's vocabulary, and going to his valise took out his reward for muscular merit and showed it to her. "Isn't that smooth?"
Her eyes shone with pride. "How much do you suppose you can borrow on it?" she asked.
He looked at her with musing eyes. "Say twenty, and you may have both mug and watch."
She went to her purse and handed to him the money.
He took it without hesitation. "Well, here's where I hit the pavement for a job."
She confronted him in a final appeal. "Oh, Victor, I can't bear to have you doubt me even for an hour. Stay with me to-day. Stay and let me talk with you. I've had so little of you. Just think! for more than twelve years I've kept you away from me--I've starved myself--my mother-self--in order that you might grow to manhood untroubled by my faith, and I can't bear to have you doubt me now."
He understood something of her emotion and responded to it. "You dear, faithful little mother, I realize now what I have cost you, and I'm grateful; but that's the very reason why I can't let you do any more of it. I must begin to pay you back."
"All you need to do to pay me is to let me look at you," she fondly replied. "I'm proud of you, Victor. I was proud of you last night. I saw Leo admiring you, and Mrs. Joyce thinks you are splendid."
He was interested. "By the way, who is Miss Wood?"
"She's a niece of Mrs. Joyce. Mrs. Joyce is the widow of Joyce the lumberman."
"She seems to have all kinds of money." His face was thoughtful again.
"Yes, she's rich, and she has been very kind to me. She took me to California and to Europe. She is always doing things for me. It was just like her to come to me yesterday--she is not one to fail in time of trouble. I don't know what I should do without her."