"I don't know what I ever did to have such a son," she said. "After this I am not going to be his mother any longer. I shall call him Master Richard, as if he were a stranger, and he shall call me Mrs. Harcourt. Nothing else."
Trixie and I held each other closer. It was a terrible sentence. To be a stranger in one's own home! And not to have any mother! Little Dick's red, childish cheeks paled, and he looked frightened. He made a hurried movement forward, and caught hold of my mother's dress.
"Oh, mother!" he cried, beseechingly.
"Go away, Master Richard," she commanded. "I am not your mother."
"Oh, please, Mrs. Harcourt," Dick wailed. "Oh, please, Mrs. Harcourt, let me call you mother!"
But my mother was inexorable. She pushed away his hands, and walked out of the room, leaving him behind. They all went away, she, and grandmother, and Norah, and even little Trixie. I was the only one who remained.
I was very sorry for Dick, and I wanted to hug him badly. But I did not quite dare. Dick never liked anybody to hug him, and it was very seldom that he cried. He dug his fists into his eyes for a moment, and then he took them away, and looked at me, gloomily.
"All right," he said. "If she ain't my mother I ain't her little boy!"
Then he walked into the next room which was his own, and went down into the bottom bureau drawer, and got out a box with a red lining. In it was his Waterbury watch. That was the most valuable thing that Dick possessed. He always took it to bed with him at night, and he wound it up in the mornings, and sometimes, when he didn't mean to play very hard, sometimes he wore it. He put it on now, and he put two clean handkerchiefs in his pocket, and his knife, and a red ball, and the knob off the machine drawer, and two rubber bands, and a wish-bone, and the little box out of a doll that makes her cry, and the stopper of a cologne bottle. And he opened his missionary box, and fished out ten pennies,—the ones which he was saving to educate a native child in India. When I saw that I knew that things were very serious. I went up close to him and touched him.