She did not notice this; the flood of despair and longing broke into entreaty; how could she get her child—her own child—who considered her just an outsider! "That's Miss Lydia's influence!" she said.
Doctor Lavendar listened, asked a question or two, and then was silent.
"I am dying for him!" she said; "oh, I am in agony for him!"
The old man looked at her with pitying keenness. Was this agony a spiritual birth or was it just the old selfishness which had never brooked denial? And if indeed it was a travail of the spirit, would not the soul be stillborn if her son's love should fail to sustain it? Yet why should Johnny love her? . . . Mary was talking and trying not to cry; her words were a fury of pain and protest:
"Miss Lydia won't give him up to people who haven't any claim upon him,—I mean any claim that is known. Of course we have a claim—the greatest! But Johnny doesn't know, so he won't consent to take our name—though it is our right! He doesn't know any reason for it. You see?"
"I see."
"I suppose if we told him the truth we could get him. But I'm afraid to tell him. Yet without telling him I can't make him love me! He said I was an 'outsider.' I! his mother! But if he knew there was a reason—"
Doctor Lavendar looked out of the window into the yellowing leaves of the old jargonelle-pear tree, and shook his head. "Hearts don't come when Reason whistles to 'em," he said.
"Oh, if I could just hear him say 'mother'!"
"Why should he say 'mother'? You haven't been a mother to him."