He looked up into her face with tear filled eyes. The thought that had long been with him that he must prove his patriotism by personal sacrifice, had grown during these last few days into a settled conviction and a great desire. He wanted her to see the situation as he saw it, and to feel with him the bitterness of his disappointment. And she did. She twined her arm more closely about his neck and pressed her lips against his hair.
But her heart-felt sympathy made too great a draft on his emotional nature. It silenced his voice and flooded his eyes. So she drew her chair up beside him, and he laid his head in her lap as he had used to do when he was a very little boy, and wept out his disappointment and grief.
And as he lay there a new thought came to him. Swiftly as a whirlwind forms and sweeps across the land, it took on form and motion and swept through the channels of his mind. He sprang to his feet, dashed the tears from his face, and looked down on his mother with a countenance transformed.
"Mother!" he exclaimed, "I have an idea!"
"Why, Pen; how you startled me! What is it?"
"I have an idea, mother. I'm going to—"
He paused and looked away from her.
"Going to what, Pen?"
He did not reply at once, but after a moment he said:
"I'll tell you later, mother, after it's all worked out and I'm sure of it. I'm not going to bring home to you any more disappointments."