"Innocent fun I never object to, but sport is too dearly bought at the sacrifice of truth.
"My boy," she added with energy, "one should go to the stake rather than tell a falsehood; though it were no more than to say that two and two do not make four."
"Mother, I believe you would!" he said, gazing with loving admiration into her earnest face. "I've never known you to swerve a hair's breadth from the truth in any way," and coming close to her side and speaking almost in a whisper, "I mean to try to be worthy of you in the future."
She looked at him with glistening eyes, and dropping her work took his hands in hers for a moment.
The others were not listening; Zillah and Ada had caught sight of the new dresses, were admiring them and asking eager questions of their aunt and sister.
"My boy," Mrs. Keith said in moved tones, "I would rather be the mother of a poor hard working man of whom it could be said that he had always been perfectly honest and true, than of one who had amassed his millions and attained to the highest worldly honors by fraud or questionable deeds or words. Remember that all your life."
"Mother, I will; I have my father's example to help me as well as yours," the lad replied with a proud glance at the noble, kindly, intellectual face of a gentleman who came in at that instant with Fan in his arms and the two little boys gamboling about him.
"Ah, Aunt Wealthy, good morning!" he said in a cheery tone, sitting down beside her, putting Fan on one knee, and lifting the babe, who was laughing and crowing with delight at sight of him, to the other. "I suppose you have heard the news?"
"That you are going to Indiana, Stuart! Yes. You are not contented to let well enough alone?"
"Can't consider it well enough to be barely making the two ends meet while a growing family must be constantly increasing my expenses."