itself. You have to give your mind {201} and soul to
it. I tell you I know. _I know because I was motherless!_ Can't you
see that everything your specialists can do for the child is useless
if you don't give it what it wants and needs the very most of all? Oh,
I think some grown-ups were born grown-up. They don't seem to
remember!"

"Remember--remember what?" Clarissa interjected sharply.

"I don't know that I can make you understand. It is such a simple,
elemental thing. You either know it, or you don't. You may mother
chickens in a brooder, but you must mother children in your arms.
After you left, mother, for four mortal years I was the most miserable
scrap on earth. I was fed and clothed and taught and cared for. I was
petted, too, but it was never _right_. All the while I felt {202} myself
alone. Aunt Josephine did n't count; even father did n't, then. I
could not sleep for loneliness, and I used to wake far in the night,
my eyes all wet with tears. I had been crying in my sleep. The
universe felt desolate and vacant. Just one little girl alone in it!
There was such a weight at my heart! I would cry and cry. It was an
awful, constant hunger for the mother that I did n't have. So I know
how it is with all children. Their hearts must be fed!"

Clarissa listened, astounded.

The girl stood now at the open window, breathing in the soft spring
air in long-drawn, tremulous breaths. The excitement of speech was
upon her. Her eyes were liquid, wonderful. And never, in all her life,
had she looked so like the woman who watched her breathlessly.

{203}

"These are such big things," she went on, "I hardly know how to talk
about them. But I have thought a great deal. I know the world must be
made better, and every one must do his share. But, mother, you can't
save the world in platoons. Even Christ had but twelve disciples. I'm
not denying that thousands of women must work outside the home; I'm
not denying that hundreds may be specially called to do work in and
for the world. But the mothers are not called. They must not go,
unless want drives. They have the homes to make--the part of the homes
that is atmosphere. Oh, don't you know what I mean? The women who
understand can make a home in a boarding-house or in foreign lodgings;
in a camp on the desert or in an eyrie in the mountains. It's the feel
of it! Don't you understand it at {204} all,--the warm, comforted,
easeful feeling that encompasses you when you come in t