And Hugh, on his part, had a deeply interested auditor in his mother, as he spun the yarn that equaled anything he had ever read in the Arabian Nights.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN A SAFE HARBOR AT LAST
Hugh had finished breakfast on Sunday morning, and was out looking after a few pets he had in the way of Belgian hares and homing pigeons, when he heard his mother calling him.
"Coming, Mother!" he answered hack, thinking on the spur of the moment he was needed to look after the furnace or steam boiler, from which the hired girl did not always succeed in getting the best results on particularly frosty mornings.
She waited for him just inside the door. Hugh saw immediately that his first surmise was wrong, for there was a look on her face to tell him it was no trivial matter she had to communicate.
"What is it, Mother?" he asked quickly.
"She is asking for you, Hugh," he was told.
Then he suddenly remembered about the young mother who had lain there since Thursday evening, and out of her mind with fever.
"Oh! then the good old Doc was right!" Hugh exclaimed; "he said, you know, that he felt sure she'd be in her right senses by Sunday morning. You've been talking with her, have you, Mother?"