"Little Boy Jack, there is no use in it. You have got to go away again. You are a wound that will not heal. It is your Dear Mother's eyes. It is your Dear Mother's mouth. It is your Dear Mother's smile. God forgive me, but I cannot bear it! I am going to send you away to school in England."
You put your finger cautiously up to your eyes and traced their round, firm contour. Your Mother's eyes? They felt like two heaping teaspoonfuls of tears. Your Mother's mouth? Desperately you poked it into a smile. "Going to send me away to school in England?" you stammered. "Never mind. Sam will not cut his beard until I come."
"What?" cried your Father in a great voice. "W-h-a-t?"
But you pretended that you had not said anything, because it was boy-talk and your Father would not have understood it.
Never, never, never had you seen your Father so suffering; yet when he took you in his arms and raised your face to his and quizzed you: "Little Boy Jack, do you love me? Do you love me?" you scanned him out of your Mother's made-over eyes and answered him out of your Mother's made-over mouth:
"N—o! N—o! I don't love you!"
And he jumped back as though you had knifed him, and then laughed out loud as though he were glad of the pain.
"But I ask you this," he persisted, and the shine in his eyes was like a sunset glow in the deep woods, and the touch of his hands would have lured you into the very heart of the flame. "It is not probable," he said, "that your Dear Mother's child and mine will go through Life without knowing Love. When your Love-Time comes, if you understand all Love's tragedies then, and forgive me, will you send me a message?"
"Oh, yes," you cried out suddenly. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" and clung to him frantically with your own boyish hands, and kissed him with your Mother's mouth. But you did not love him. It was your Mother's mouth that loved him.
So you went away to school in England and grew up and up and up some more; but somehow this latter growing up was a dull process without savor, and the years went by as briefly and inconsequently as a few dismissing sentences in a paragraph. There were plenty of people to work with and play with, but almost no one to think with, and your hard-wrought book knowledge faded to nothingness compared to the three paramount convictions of your youthful experience, namely, that neither coffee nor ocean nor Life tasted as good as it smelled.