  The whole family was at the station to see them off. Annabel had provided luncheon and a tea-basket and little pillows and waxed paper and drinking-cups, and she flitted about her mother with watchful eyes. There was a kind of jealous loyalty in her, as if she would hold her mother by main force from this foolish thing she had entered upon.... She went with them into the car and settled the little pillow in place and stood with her hand on her mother’s shoulder.... Outside, through the window, she could see the others laughing and talking. Her mother lifted her face quickly. “You will be carried off!” she said hurriedly. The younger woman smiled down at her—and her face broke in little, helpless lines. She bent and kissed her almost fiercely. “You take care of yourself!... If anything happened to you—!” And she was gone. Outside, the group moved and laughed and waved inane farewells. Annabel joined it wiping her eyes. She waved her handkerchief at the receding window and dabbed it swiftly across her eyes. The red light at the end of the rear car receded into a dark tunnel. Annabel caught her breath. “I don’t see why we let her do it!” she said helplessly. “You couldn’t stop mother!” It was William Archer. He tucked her hand protectingly in his arm. “She’ll be all right!” he said reassuringly. Annabel shook her head. They had turned away from the blackness of the tunnel and were walking toward the station. The others had scattered a little, and gone on ahead. Annabel’s eyes followed them. “She isn’t fit to do it!” she said.... “She’s like a child. I feel as if I couldn’t—!” Her lip trembled, and she broke off. William Archer smiled down at her. “Mother’s all right! She brought us up—five of us. And she’s pretty near brought father up—and I guess a few Chinamen won’t frighten her!” Annabel looked at him absently. “I didn’t tell her where I put the extra flannels—for the steamer. They say it’s cold—sometimes!” “Telegraph!” replied William Archer promptly. “Want me to go home with you?” They stood at the corner of the street. Annabel shook her head. “Of course not! Don’t be silly!... I shall telegraph to-night—a night-letter.” “Whereto?” She looked at him helplessly. “I don’t know.... And she’s always been so fixed before! Wherever I went, I seemed always just kind of circling around mother and coming back to her. And now she’s off like that—whirling into space!” She made a sweeping gesture of her hands and looked up to him appealingly. The little laugh left William Archer’s face. “There’s no one in the world, of course, like mother.... Never has been—for me.... I suppose all men feel that way—about their mothers.” He said it slowly and looked at her inquiringly. “But it seems somehow as if she were somebody in particular—and nobody else could know—how we feel about her.” “They can’t—and they don’t!” said Annabel grimly. They stood looking at each other with quiet understanding. They had not felt so near together in years, not since they played in the branches of the oak-tree, and William Archer had called down to her from the topmost branch: “Come on up!” She nodded to him with a little smile of remembrance and affection, and they turned and went their separate ways.
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