"No!" Carl broke out, "it won't do! You see, I—don't want him to know." He paused, then seemed to pull the words out with a jerk: "I won't let him have any disrespect for his mother, and—" He got up and tramped about the room. "Damn it! I don't want to lose his good opinion, myself."
Her face turned darkly red. "Oh," she cried, passionately, "'opinion'! What difference does his 'opinion' make to me? A mother is a mother. And I love him! Oh, I love him so, I could just die! If he would put his arms around me the way he does to that terrible Miss Lydia, and kiss me, and say"—she clenched her hands and closed her eyes, and whispered the word she hungered to hear—"'Mother! Mother!' If I could hear him say that," she said, "I could just lie down and die! Couldn't you?—to hear him say 'Father'?"
Robertson set his teeth. "And what kind of an idea would he have of his 'father'? No, I won't consent to it!"
"We can't get him in any other way," she urged.
"Then we'll never get him. I can't face it."
"You don't love him as much as I do!"
"I love him enough not to want to risk losing his respect."
But this sentiment was beyond Johnny's mother; all she thought of was her aching hunger for the careless, good-humored, but bored young man. The hunger for him grew and grew; it gnawed at her day and night. She urged Carl to take a house in Princeton while Johnny was in college, and only Johnny's father's common sense kept this project from being carried out. "You're afraid!" she taunted him.
"Dear," he said, kindly, "I'm afraid of being an ass. If he saw us tagging after him he'd hate us both. He's a man!" Carl said, proudly. "No, I've no fancy for losing the regard of"—he paused—"my son," he said, very quietly.
His wife put her hand over her mouth and stared at him; the word was too great for her; it was her baby she thought of, not her son.