Captain June

								

mother's hand. "I am going too!" he cried in quick alarm, "I won't stay
behind, I can't, mother!"
Her arm tightened about him. "But I don't dare take you, June, think of
the terrible heat and the fever, and you are the only little boy I've
got in the world, and I love you so!"
"I won't take the fever," protested June. "I'll be good. I'll mind every
word Seki says."
"But Seki isn't going. She wants to take you home with her down to a
little town on the Inland Sea, where there are all sorts of wonderful
things to do. Would you stay with her, June, while I go to father?"
Her voice pleaded with eagerness and anxiety, but June did not heed it.
Slipping from her arms, he threw himself on the floor and burst into a
passion of tears. All the joys of the enchanted country had vanished,
nothing seemed to count except that mother was thinking of leaving him
in this strange land and sailing away from him across the sea.
"Don't cry so, June, listen," pleaded his mother. "I have not decided, I
am trying to do what is best."
But June refused to be consoled. Over and over he declared that he would
not stay, that he would rather have the fever, and die than to be left
behind.
By and by the room grew still, his mother no longer tried to pacify him,
only the ticking of the little traveling clock on the table broke the
stillness. He peeped through his fingers at the silent figure in the
chair above him. He had never seen her look so white and tired, all the
pretty smiles and dimples seemed gone forever, her eyes were closed and
her lips were tightly drawn together. June crept close and slipped his
hand into hers. In an instant her arms were about him.
"I don't know what to do, nor where to turn," she sobbed. "I am afraid
to take you and afraid to leave you. What must I do?"
June was sure he did not know but when mothers are little and helpless
and look at you as if you were grown up, you have to think of a way. He
was standing beside her with his arm around her neck, and he could feel
her trembling all over. Father often said in his letters, "Be sure to
take care of that little Mother of yours," but it had always seemed a
joke until now. He sighed, then he straightened his shoulders:
"I'll stay, Mudderly," he said, then he added with a swallow, "Maybe it
will help me to be a soldier when I get big!"

                               CHAPTER II

"SEKI SAN, look at the old woman with black teeth! What made them black?
What have the little girls got flowers in their hair for? What are they
ringing the bell for?"
Seki San sitting on her heels at the car window tried to answer all
June's questions at once. The sad parting was over. Mrs. Royston had
left in the night on the steamer they had crossed in, and the Captain
and the Purser and all the passengers were going to take care of her
until she got to Hong Kong, and after that it was only a short way to
Manila, and once she was with Father, June felt that his responsibility