There were reasons enough why Bobby seldom saw his mother. The house was very big, and her room so far away from his;—that was one reason. Then he always went to bed, and got up, and ate his meals before she did.
There was another reason why he and the beautiful young mother did not know each other very well, but even Olga had never explained that one. Bobby had that ahead of him to find out,—poor Bobby! Some one had called him Fire Face once at school, but the kind-hearted teacher had never let it happen again.
At home, in the great empty house, the mirrors were all high up out of reach, and in the nursery there had never been any at all. Bobby had never looked at himself in a mirror. Of course he had seen himself up to his chin—dear, yes—and admired his own little straight legs often enough, and doubled up his little round arms to hunt for his “muscle.” In a quiet, unobtrusive way Bobby was rather proud of himself. He had to be—there was no one else, you see. And even at six, when there is so little else to do, one can put in considerable time regarding one’s legs and arms.
“I guess you don’t call those bow-legged legs, do you, Olga?” he had exulted once, in an unguarded moment when he had been thinking of Cleggy Munro’s legs at school. “I guess you call those pretty straight-up-’n’-down ones!” And the hard face of the old nurse had suddenly softened in a strange, pleasant way, and for the one only time that he could remember, Olga had taken Bobby in her arms and kissed him.
“They’re beautiful legs, that iss so,” Olga had said, but she hadn’t been looking at them when she said it. She had been looking straight into his face. The look hurt, too, Bobby remembered. He did not know what pity was, but it was that that hurt.
The night after he learned U at school Bobby decided to hazard everything and ask Olga what the one in his name stood for. He could not put it off any longer.
“Olga, what does the U in the middle o’ my name stand for?” he broke out, suddenly, while he was being unbuttoned for bed. “I know it’s a U, but I don’t know a U-what. I’ve ’cided I won’t go to bed till I’ve found out.”
Things had gone criss-cross. The old Norwegian woman was not in a good humor.
“Unwelcome—that iss what it must stand for,” she laughed unpleasantly.
“Bobby Unwelcome!” Bobby laughed too. Then a piteous little suspicion crept into his mind and began to grow. He turned upon Olga sharply. “What does Unwelcome mean?” he demanded.