"Perhaps," he said to himself, "perhaps in time they'll forget that there ever was a fellow named 'Deacon' Young."
Then the car turned the curve, and the college was hidden from view.
CHAPTER XIV
"HOME FROM COLLEGE"
She was standing beside the neatly painted horse-block, waiting to welcome her boy. Will had spied her from the road.
As the buggy turned in through the gate he began to brace himself for meeting her. This was going to be harder, he knew, than had been the meeting at the railroad station a little while before, with his father, whose honest old eyes had looked at him so searchingly.
He was coming nearer and nearer. She was smiling. It was the same motherly smile he had known he would see. Now she was speaking his name. The next moment he was out of the buggy, and she was kissing him just as when he was an innocent little boy. She was frightened at her son's pale, haggard face, but she did not want him to know it, and only said, patting his cheek laughingly, "Why didn't you take better care of yourself, child?"
