His mother insisted on
calling it his sailor suit, as though he were a little boy. One
day Josie Morehouse came over to Mrs. Houghton's with a group
picture in her hand. She handed it to Eddie's mother without
comment. Mrs. Houghton looked at it eagerly, her eye selecting her
own boy from the group as unerringly as a mother bird finds her
nest in the forest.
"Oh, Eddie's better looking than that!" she cried, with a
tremulous little laugh. "How funny those pants make them look,
don't they? And his mouth isn't that way, at all. Eddie always
had the sweetest mouth, from the time he was a baby. Let's see
some of these other boys. Why--why----"
Then she fell silent, scanning those other faces. Presently
Josie bent over her and looked too, and the brows of both women
knitted in perplexity. They looked for a long, long minute, and
the longer they looked the more noticeable became the cluster of
fine little wrinkles that had begun to form about Mrs. Houghton's
eyes.
When finally they looked up it was to gaze at one another
questioningly.
"Those other boys," faltered Eddie's mother, "they--they don't
look like Eddie, do they? I mean----"
"No, they don't," agreed Josie. "They look older, and they
have such queer-looking eyes, and jaws, and foreheads. But then,"
she finished, with mock cheerfulness, "you can never tell in those
silly kodak pictures.
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