Suzanna woke the next morning to a realization that she was in a strange place. She occupied a large bed, too large, it seemed to her, for one small girl. And even the silken coverlet failed to assuage the sudden wave of homesickness which threatened to engulf her.

She lay thinking. A clock on the dresser showed her the hour to be seven. Maizie would be up and downstairs. She would have buttoned Peter and would be carrying the blue dishes from the pantry to the dining-room. Father would be in the attic for a glance at his beloved Machine before obeying mother's cheerful call to breakfast.

Suzanna choked back a lump insistent upon rising to her throat. Across the way was home and she had adopted herself out of it! Here all was quiet, and comfortable, very comfortable. The mattress was thick, her small body quite sank into its depths; the bed she shared with Maizie, she had realized on occasions, had lumps, and no silken coverlet spreading itself brilliantly. Still there were rare and beautiful compensations for the lack of thick mattresses and silken coverlets—and greatest grief to her of all was that she stood no longer a daughter to a great man!

The tears came perilously near. Suzanna choked them back as she heard "Reynolds" close the front gate with what to him was a gentle click. She felt that in a moment Mrs. Reynolds would summon her downstairs to a breakfast hot and delicious.

Why had she left home if she loved it so!

The sentence formed itself in her mind.

Well, she hadn't realized that home and those in it were so dear till she left. And her reason was a good one. It had seemed she could scarcely live possessed of a dress whose sweet possibilities were denied by a mother's spirit of economy. Never had she so intensely wished for anything as for the goods to be cut away from under the rows of lace.

Still now, lying there alone in her strange surroundings, that desire was losing its poignancy. It didn't seem quite to fill her entire universe.

Mrs. Reynolds put her head inside the door. She wore a crisp blue and white dress, her black hair was drawn smoothly back from her brow. Her eyes dwelt lovingly on the little girl.

"Quite awake, Suzanna?" she asked.

Suzanna nodded. She couldn't trust herself to speak.

"Well, then," said Mrs. Reynolds, "I'm going to give thee a treat." She went away quite unconscious that she had fallen into her original quaint method of speech.

Presently she returned, carrying a tray covered with a white and red napkin.

Suzanna sat up, received the tray in her lap and waited unexcitedly while Mrs. Reynolds removed the enshrouding napkin.

There lay an orange cut up and sugared; a poached egg on a slice of perfectly browned toast, and a glass of rich milk.

"For my little girl," said Mrs. Reynolds in her contralto voice. "Now eat thee, my dearie, and take your time. I'll leave now."

Alone once more, Suzanna surveyed the tray. She lifted a spoon with the tiniest piece of orange on its tip, and found strangely that when she attempted to swallow the fruit her throat quite closed up.

Suddenly there came a memory of Drusilla. Drusilla had told of the little silver chain, binding all to one another. Surely the chain binding Suzanna to her mother was doubly thick, yet she had broken it! She put the tray to one side and sprang from the bed. Her desire, recently so keen, so all absorbing, seemed little indeed beside the yearning now to be back across the way once again her Mother's Child.

Mrs. Reynolds, returning, found her little guest at the window, bare feet on the cold floor; the white gown held tightly at the neck by a small, trembling hand. A glance at the tray on the bed revealed a breakfast practically untasted.

"Why, my lamb," began Mrs. Reynolds, "not a bite gone down!"

Suzanna turned, a desperate little face she showed, eyes wide and appealing.

"I just couldn't eat, Mrs. Reynolds." No thought now of bestowing the beloved title.

"And the food brought fine to bed to you."

"Not even then."

"Well, come then, dear heart; you must be dressed. I put your clothes away neat and tidy."

Mrs. Reynolds opened a closet door and brought forth an armful of garments. Suzanna surveyed them as though they had no relation to her.

Mrs. Reynolds went suddenly and picked up the little figure, carried her to a rocking chair and with no word held her close.

"What is it, my little girl?" asked Mrs. Reynolds after a time, softly.

Her little girl! Suzanna winced. But she was Mrs. Reynolds' little girl now. Hadn't she broken all ties with the loved ones across the way?

She tried to find comfort in Mrs. Reynolds' joy. "I am your little girl, aren't I?" she asked softly, calling valiantly on her sense of justice.

Mrs. Reynolds looked searchingly into Suzanna's face. With no child of her own, she was still a mother-at-heart. She was full of understanding.

"As much, my own lassie," she answered, "as any other woman's child can be. You see," she went on after a pause, "there's a bond 'tween mother and child that can't ever be broke."

"But I adopted myself out to you," said Suzanna, though her heart was beating with hope.

"Yes, you did," admitted Mrs. Reynolds; "but you didn't at that break the tie that binds you to your own mother. You could never do that, Suzanna, lassie."

As Suzanna looked up into the kind face, new thoughts came surging to her. She couldn't separate them, couldn't arrange them. They all jumbled together, like vivid picture impressions, full of color and feeling. One thought at length cleared itself, stood out.

Love and the chain binding you to those you loved was the biggest thing in the world.

So she told Mrs. Reynolds about Drusilla's chain. And Mrs. Reynolds, greatly impressed, said: "Yes, it's a blessed thread that holds us together. Reynolds calls it the 'sense of brotherhood.'" Her voice lowered itself: "He's a Socialist, Reynolds is, Suzanna." There was pride and fear mixed with a little condemnation in her voice.

"A Socialist—it's a nice word, isn't it?" said Suzanna, settling more comfortably into the hollow of Mrs. Reynolds' arm.

"And I'm going to see Drusilla, as you call her," said Mrs. Reynolds, "and take her some of my crab jelly. I've seen her many's the time sitting out in the yard with naught but a trained maid by her. Poor, poor old soul, with a rich daughter-in-law."

"And a King that's gone to the Far Country," said Suzanna; "and she longs for him. Oh, she's a lonely old lady."

"She must be that and all," said Mrs. Reynolds, wholly sympathetic.

They sat rocking then in silence. Suzanna was the first to speak.

"Mrs. Reynolds," she began in a low voice. "I think I'll dress now, and after I've helped with the breakfast dishes I'll go and see my mother."

The heartbreak in the small voice touched Mrs. Reynolds deeply. "Why, small lass," she cried: "You mustn't think I'll hold you to your giving yourself away to me. No, not even for a bit of time. Sweet, you gave me joy last night. I pretended that you were my own. I undressed you and put you to bed, and heard your prayers. You did something for me, and I be vastly grateful to you."

Suzanna's eyes brightened. "Oh, thank you for saying all that, Mrs. Reynolds."

"Yes, you came to me in the night with your shiny bag, and you told in your little way some truths to Reynolds. You made him see clear and farther than he has for many a day, the fine man though he is, and I'll always hold you in my heart as my dream child."

"Your dream child—and I'll dream for you—that you should have your heart's desire like the fairies say," finished Suzanna.

"Ah, lack-a-me," cried Mrs. Reynolds. "Who e'er gets his deepest heart desire in this drear world?"

Suzanna sprang to her feet.

"Oh, but heart's desires change."

"Change!"

"Yes. You can have new ones every day. Why, for many days my deepest heart's desire has been to have the goods cut away from under the lace. Now, I don't care so much for that—not so much—Now I want most in the world to see—my—mother—"

Fearful that she had hurt Mrs. Reynolds by her confession, she put out her hand and stroked the capable hand lying near.

But Mrs. Reynolds wasn't hurt. She was smiling. "Well, it's a hard thing at times to learn to put one wish in place of another. But I guess life teaches you that; it hurries you forward so you have to put wish on wish." She stood up. "And now, the morning's well started, Suzanna. Dress quickly and come down to a warm breakfast."

She raised the tray and Suzanna knew that now she was hungry.

"Come down when you're ready, my wee bit girl," said Mrs. Reynolds, as she left, carrying the tray with her.

So Suzanna in a short time descended. How restful the house was; no insistent voices of children, no clattering of dishes.

"It's so quiet and nice here, Mrs. Reynolds," said Suzanna, as she entered the kitchen. "At home there's lots of talking and sometimes the baby cries."

"Do you like quiet, Suzanna?"

"Ye-es," Suzanna stammered. A recurrent attack of homesickness was upon her; that dreadful pulling of the heartstrings; that sinking feeling that she had cut herself loose from all to whom she belonged rightfully.

She stood still watching Mrs. Reynolds who was busy at the stove. She admired the deftness with which an egg was broken and dropped into boiling water, and in a few seconds brought to the top intact, to be placed upon the awaiting toast.

"You're awful quick, Mrs. Reynolds," she started to say when a knock sounded upon the door.

The door slowly opened and, alone, Suzanna's mother entered.

She stood just looking in. She was pale, her eyes wide, languid, shadows beneath them as though she had not slept. But those same tired eyes lightened as they fell upon Suzanna.

"Mother-eyes," the phrase grew in Suzanna's heart. She should never in all her life forget that look of longing, of love.

And somehow another impression, new, almost unbelievable, came to Suzanna. Her mother was young, for wasn't that yearning note in her voice; that tentative little gesture; her whole questioning attitude, all her seekings, but expressions of her youngness? She wasn't after all far removed from her little daughter, not for this minute, anyway. A delicious sense of comradeship with this mother flooded the child.

And the mother stood and looked at her child, almost as for the first time, at least with a sense of newness, as though Suzanna had been born anew to her.

In the night a far reaching understanding had come to her. It came out of her conclusion to strike a blow at the child's oversensitiveness by a full dose of ridicule; by accusing her of affectation, a clever playing to the gallery; this when the night was early, and the mother still aching with weariness from the day's many tasks. And then as the hours wore on, and the quiet soothed her weary nerves, the knowledge came, flashing out of the ether, as often it does for serious mothers, that the gift of keen sensibility, of intense desire was too valuable to be quenched.

What if Suzanna began to question her own motives; what if she should lose belief in her own spiritual integrity; learn in time to look in on herself with a spirit of morbid analysis instead of living out her natural qualities beautifully and spontaneously!

All these truths stirred her again as she looked at her child.

While Suzanna didn't move from her place, she wanted to stay at some distance that she might look her soul's full at her mother—her mother!

At length she spoke: "Mother—I want to be your little girl again. Will you take me back?"

Would she take her back? Mrs. Procter's arms opened wide. Into them Suzanna flew.

Mrs. Reynolds regarded the cold poached egg, the second one spoiled that morning. Furtively she wiped the tears from her eyes. At last she cleared her voice and spoke:

"I'll go upstairs and pack your bag, Suzanna," she said.