She was telling me that Frank had spoken to her of me last night when he returned from the blessed settlement. He always came to her bedside, nowadays, knowing that she would be awake and waiting to hear where he had been. And so he had whispered, while his father slept, of the strange young man who was so kind—a Jew, like them—and yet who had no faith in God.
Then suddenly she began to beg something. "Mutter, mutter," was all I could make of it—and I guessed that she was asking me of my mother, and wondering why I did not listen at her knee as Frank had done at his own mother's. And when I told her that my mother was dead, tears came into her eyes, and this was the finest sympathy I had ever known.
For she put her big, buttery hand on mine and shook her head. "You must learn to know God," I think she said. "He alone can take your mother's place. He made my son what I longed he should be. He will make you what you most desire. In God alone is there happiness."
And so Frank and I went out and down the dirty, narrow stairs, and came into a street of Heaven itself—a street of early sunlight, and a clear sky above—and morning smiles upon the faces of all passersby. Or so it seemed to me, at any rate.
Because, for once in my life, I had seen the happiness of mother and child swept up into glory that is God's.
And I laughed to think of Mr. Richard's remark that religion works harm among these East Side people.