“Help you?” I cried. It was the first time that an American suggested that I could help her.
“Yes, indeed. I have always wanted to know more of that mysterious, vibrant life—the immigrant. You can help me know my girls. You have so much to give—”
“Give—that’s what I was hungering and thirsting all these years—to give out what’s in me. I was dying in the unused riches of my soul.”
“I know; I know just what you mean,” she said, putting her hand on mine.
My whole being seemed to change in the warmth of her comprehension. “I have a friend,” it sang itself in me. “I have a friend!”
“And you are a born American?” I asked. There was none of that sure, all-right look of the Americans about her.
“Yes, indeed. My mother, like so many mothers,”—and her eyebrows lifted humorously whimsical,—“claims we’re descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, and that one of our lineal ancestors came over in the Mayflower.”
“For all your mother’s pride in the Pilgrim Fathers, you yourself are as plain from the heart as an immigrant.”
“Weren’t the Pilgrim Fathers immigrants two hundred years ago?”
She took from her desk a book and read to me.