He was crying bitterly.
He had no words of explanation or defence.

His thick underlip stuck out and gave him the appeal of a penitent dog; the tears had furrowed paler channels down grimy cheeks; he was the very incarnation of uncouth misery.
But his mother saw none of these things....

On the instant he seemed to her transfigured.

Something she saw in him of all the generations of pleading boys that had passed before her, something of the stern confidence of the man over whose grave the ring had fluttered.

But more--far more.