Harper’s Magazine/The Boy’s Mother

The Boy's Mother
BY LAURA SPENCER PORTOR
FOR many days, off and on at frequent intervals, Merington might have been seen striding up the path of a certain garden. Then there was that one day when she met him in the library; the day when her lame brother limped out of the room on his crutches and left her and Merington and a perfectly dead silence.
Merington never knew exactly how he got to the subject; very few men who make a success of it ever do. Why should a man remember just what got him to the point where he is as melted wax before the woman he loves? Merington probably could not have told you any more than that at last he took her in his arms with his own clumsy fierceness, and said a few broken sentences.
It might be recorded that Merington floated home that night. When he got home he sat and floated some more for a long time; and finally, toward two o'clock, he went to bed.
During the next week there was news for him. Merington was probably twice as surprised as the world at large, barring the German Empire, when the world broke into war. Nobody was more confident that there could not be war:
"Good Lord! my dear, we've got past fighting! Why, the murder machines themsel

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