She put her hand over mine. “You have had no one to talk to—no one to share your thoughts.”
I marveled at the simplicity with which she explained me to myself. I couldn’t speak. I just looked at her.
“But now,” she said, gently, “you have some one. Come to me whenever you wish.”
“I have a friend,” it sang itself in me. “I have a friend.”
“And you are a born American?” I asked. There was none of that sure, all-right look of the Americans about her.
“Yes, indeed! My mother, like so many mothers,”—and her eyebrows lifted humorously whimsical,—“claims we’re descendants of the Pilgrim fathers. And that one of our lineal ancestors came over in the Mayflower.”
“For all your mother’s pride in the Pilgrim fathers, you yourself are as plain from the heart as an immigrant.”
“Weren’t the Pilgrim fathers immigrants two hundred years ago?”
She took from her desk a book called “Our America,” by Waldo Frank, and read to me: “We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we create.”
“Ach, friend! Your words are life to me! You make it light for my eyes!”