"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.