Jackson Gregory

“ Only a dull, dead, hopeless monotone.
“You are a very fine girl, mumsey,” he told her frankly. “But, after all, you are only a little girl. You should have some one to tell you that you must not do this thing.”
And as frankly she answered him:
“I am more than a little girl, John Chester. I am a woman. And he is a baby. Don't you see?”
He shook his head.
“A man is not necessarily a fool. He knows love as well as a woman. Yes, and the same kind of love! If he be a man, he is father and mother as well as husband to the woman he marries. ”

“ There is the same yearning, the same protection, the same tenderness, that the woman feels for her baby, or for babies that are motherless. For all natural women, be they good or bad, are the mothers of all motherless babies. ”

“ There isn't but one mumsey, you know.”
“No. I thought that there might be two. Come here, John Gordon, junior, and I'll show you where a little white butterfly is trying to get herself entangled in a spider's web.”
The little fellow scrambled to his feet, his face flushed and eager, his eyes dancing. And as he got to his feet and scurried across the strip of lawn, the soul of John Chester was shocked. For John Gordon, junior, who had seemed a perfect, beautiful, graceful baby, dragged one crippled leg painfully, and one withered arm hung, swinging like a dead thing, at his side. ”

“ The head with its profusion of twisted gold, and the head with the short-cropped dark hair, shook in unison, and, as one breath, two sighs arose from John Gordon, junior, and John Chester, bachelor.
“I got in here and I couldn't get out, so I stayed,” John Gordon explained. “Do you think the man would care?”
“No. He wouldn't care. He likes little boys. He sometimes wishes he had a little boy of his own.” ”

“ John Chester hurried to ask.
“Yes, sir. She's awful good. She let me climb a tree after an eagle's nest one time. The eggs were all hatched, though. Mumsey says that all old ladies are good to little boys.”
“So mumsey is old?”
“Didn't you know that? My, there are lots of things you don't know. Why don't you go to school? I'm going some time. Mumsey says I can.”
“How old is she?”
John Gordon, junior, shook his head until the curls whipped one another across his rosy face.
“She's awful old. I think she's the oldest old lady in the world. She said so once. ”

“ He will be a man who can never be happy because he will know that there is a woman who, too, might have been happy but that she sacrificed her soul and her body, and her eternal happiness, that he might not have a crooked back! Do you know how he will feel, mumsey? ”

“ John Gordon, junior, snuggled into the arms which drew a trifle closer about him.
“No, sir. But mumsey says that pretty soon she'll have lots of money, and then she will make me all well. It's awful good to have money, isn't it?” ”