"Because long before he was born his mother paid for his birthright and happiness with part of her own, and if God is just and life fair then her courage and sorrow ought to count for something and her loss be his gain."
"Hadn't you better tell me the whole story, Grandma?" begged Nan.
"It isn't exactly all mine to tell. But some day I dare say I shall."
Grandma rose and glanced mischievously at the girl.
"Nanny, I'll tell you the day you come to me and tell me you're in love. Not engaged, you understand, but in love."
Again Nanny whitened and caught her breath and then looked quietly at Grandma in a way that made the dear old soul say hurriedly:
"There, there, child, I didn't mean to meddle or hurt."
To herself she added, "We're all blundering fools at times. And why is it that youth always thinks that all the world is blind and stupid?"
Grandma's penitent mind then recalled the box of pictures that Cynthia's son had brought down to show her the night before. It still stood on the living-room table. So the wise and tender soul sent Nanny in to fetch it.
They sat on the back steps and looked at pictures of Cynthia in her far-away home in India. There were pictures of her husband and the brown babies and of their neighbors. But mostly the pictures were of a boy, a drolly solemn little fellow. Nanny exclaimed again and again over these and the one of the boy holding a pet hen in his arms she fairly devoured.