The boy was going away to school, full of high hope.
“I shall make the football team and color two pipes the first year!” he said bravely.
His mother kissed him and wept. His father wrung his hand in silence.
They were too full for speech then.
But when he was gone, and they were calmer, they talked together of him, and prayed his ambition might not carry him beyond his strength.
The car was entirely empty with the exception of one man, but as I entered he rose, made me an unsteady but magnificent bow, and said: “Madam, pleashe be kind ’nough to asshept thish plashe.”
There was nothing else for me to do, so I thanked him and sat down. And for twenty blocks that idiot hung from a strap, swaying in the breeze, with not a soul in the car but ourselves. Occasionally I have been taken for other women; but I never before had any one think that I was a carful.