rew a deep breath and became ready too. I don't
think there is anything in the world too hard to do if you look at it
that way.

"The little boy loved me and I loved him. We had hoped against hope
that we would be able to save his poor little leg, but it had to go. I
held his hand while they gave him the chloroform. At his head sat
Doctor Hathaway with his Christlike face, draped in the robe of the
anesthetist. 'Take long breaths, Benny,' I said, and he breathed in
bravely. It was over quickly. To-morrow, when he is really out of the
ether, I have got to tell him what was done to him. Something happened
to me while that operation was going on. He hasn't any mother. I think
the spirit of the one who was his mother passed into me, and I knew
what it would be like to be the mother of a son. Benny was not without
what his mother would have felt for him if she had been at his side.
I can't explain it, but that is what I felt.

"To-night it is as black as ink outside. There are no stars. I feel as
if there should be no stars. If there were, there might be some
strange little bit of comfort in them that I could cling to. I do not
want any comfort from outside to shine upon me to-night. I have got to
draw all my strength from a source within, and I feel it welling up
within me even now.

"I wonder if I have been selfish to leave the people I love so long
without any word of me. I think Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Beulah and Aunt
Margaret all had a mother feeling for me. I am remembering to-night
how anxious they used to be for me to have warm clothing, and to keep
my feet dry, and not to work too hard at school. All those things that
I took as a matter of course, I realize now were very significant and
beautiful. If I had a child and did not know to-night where it would
lie down to sleep, or on what pillow it would put its head, I know my
own rest would be troubled. I wonder if I have caused any one of my
dear mothers to feel like that. If I have, it has been very wicked and
cruel of me."

CHAPTER XXIV

CHRISTMAS AGAIN

The ten Hutchinsons having left the library entirely alone in the hour
before dinner, David and Margaret had appropriated it and were sitting
companionably together on the big couch drawn up before the fireplace,
where a log was trying to consume itself unscientifically head first.

"I would stay to dinner if urged," David suggested.

"You stay," Margaret agreed laconically.

She moved away from h