"Ye-es," Suzanna stammered. A recurrent attack of homesickness was upon her; that dreadful pulling of the heartstrings; that sinking feeling that she had cut herself loose from all to whom she belonged rightfully.
She stood still watching Mrs. Reynolds who was busy at the stove. She admired the deftness with which an egg was broken and dropped into boiling water, and in a few seconds brought to the top intact, to be placed upon the awaiting toast.
"You're awful quick, Mrs. Reynolds," she started to say when a knock sounded upon the door.
The door slowly opened and, alone, Suzanna's mother entered.
She stood just looking in. She was pale, her eyes wide, languid, shadows beneath them as though she had not slept. But those same tired eyes lightened as they fell upon Suzanna.
"Mother-eyes," the phrase grew in Suzanna's heart. She should never in all her life forget that look of longing, of love.
And somehow another impression, new, almost unbelievable, came to Suzanna. Her mother was young, for wasn't that yearning note in her voice; that tentative little gesture; her whole questioning attitude, all her seekings, but expressions of her youngness? She wasn't after all far removed from her little daughter, not for this minute, anyway. A delicious sense of comradeship with this mother flooded the child.
And the mother stood and looked at her child, almost as for the first time, at least with a sense of newness, as though Suzanna had been born anew to her.
In the night a far reaching understanding had come to her. It came out of her conclusion to strike a blow at the child's oversensitiveness by a full dose of ridicule; by accusing her of affectation, a clever playing to the gallery; this when the night was early, and the mother still aching with weariness from the day's many tasks. And then as the hours wore on, and the quiet soothed her weary nerves, the knowledge came, flashing out of the ether, as often it does for serious mothers, that the gift of keen sensibility, of intense desire was too valuable to be quenched.
What if Suzanna began to question her own motives; what if she should lose belief in her own spiritual integrity; learn in time to look in on herself with a spirit of morbid analysis instead of living out her natural qualities beautifully and spontaneously!