This was at the end of the summer, and the prospect of saying good-by to Johnny for almost a year was more than she could bear.
"My dear!" her husband protested, "if you got him under your own roof you wouldn't be able to hold on to yourself! I could, but you couldn't. You'd tell him."
"I wouldn't! Why, I couldn't. Of course he can never know. . . . But I'm going to see—that woman, and tell her that I shall have him visit us."
"She'll not permit it."
"'Permit'!" Mary said. "Upon my word! My own child not 'permitted'!"
"It's hard," Carl said, briefly.
"You want him, too," she said, eagerly; "I can see you do! Think of having him with us for a week! I could go into his room and—and pick up his clothes when he drops them round on the floor, the way boys do." She was breathless at the thought of such happiness. "I'll tell her I'm going to have him come in the Christmas vacation. Oh, Carl"—her black, heavy eyes suddenly glittered with tears—"I want my baby," she said.
The words stabbed him; for a moment he felt that there was no price too great to pay for comfort for her. "We'll try it," he said, "but we'll have to handle Miss Lydia just right to get her to consent to it."
"'Consent'?" she said, fiercely. "Carl, I just hate her!" The long-smothered instinct of maternity leaped up and scorched her like a flame; she put her dimpled hands over her face and cried.
He tried to tell her that she wasn't just. "After all, dear, we disowned him. Naturally, she feels that he belongs to her."