t see how you can!… You’d better come on with me…. What ever got into your head to do a thing like that?” he said in a challenging tone. “Why do you want to go to a place like that?”
“Hah? What say?” The mother who had been looking from one to the other of the two boys with the quick and startled attentiveness of an animal, now broke in:
“You know each other…. Hah?… You’re taking this train, too, you say?” she said sharply.
“Ah-hah-hah!” the young man laughed abruptly, nervously; grinned, made a quick stiff little bow, and said with nervous engaging respectfulness: “Yes, Ma’am!… Ah-hah-hah!… How d’ye do?… How d’ye do, Mrs. Gant?” He shook hands with her quickly, still laughing his broken and nervous “ah-hah-hah”—“How d’ye do?” he said, grinning nervously at the younger woman and at Barton. “Ah-hah-hah. How d’ye do?”
The older woman still holding his hand in her rough worn clasp looked up at him a moment calmly, her lips puckered in tranquil meditation:
“Now,” she said quietly, in the tone of a person who refuses to admit failure, “I know you. I know your face. Just give me a moment and I’ll call you by your name.”
The young man grinned quickly, nervously, and then said respectfully in his staccato speech:
“Yes, Ma’am…. Ah-hah-hah…. Robert Weaver.”
“Ah-h, that’s so!” she cried, and shook his hands with sudden warmth. “You’re Robert Weaver’s boy, of course.”
“Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert, with his quick nervous laugh. “Yes, Ma’am…. That’s right…. Ah-hah-hah…. Gene and I went to school together. We were in the same class at the University.”
“Why, of course!” she cried in a tone of complete enlightenment, and then went on in a rather vexed manner, “I’ll vow! I knew you all along! I knew that I’d seen you just as soon as I saw your face! Your name just slipped my mind a moment—and then, of course, it all flashed over me…. You’re Robert Weaver’s boy!… And you are,” she still held his hand in her strong, motherly and friendly clasp, and looking at him with a little sly smile hovering about the corners of her mouth, she was silent a moment, regarding him quizzically—“now, boy,” she said quietly, “you may think I’ve got a pretty poor memory for names and faces—but I want to tell you something that may surprise you…. I know
