“Do grown-up ladies feel like that, Mrs. Thed—mother dear?”
Mrs. Theddon did not answer at once. Her voice was handicapped when she responded:
“Real women do, I fancy, my darling. But maybe there are a lot who have a cruel time showing it. Come, baby! Tell me—did any one ever pick you up and rock you to sleep in their arms? Did any one ever try to sing you a lullaby, child?”
“Not much, Mrs. Thed—mother. I always tried to do it to those littler than me. But I loved to do it!” the princess cried suddenly.
“Let’s sit down in the rocker, child. And don’t weep any more. Because you’ll never know how much you are appreciated here.”
The woman took the distraught, moist-eyed little girl in her arms. She tried to soothe her by singing a lullaby. She had a rich contralto voice, “trained” by a great Parisian master—for this!—to sing a little, parentless girl to sleep. Yet she had to stop half way. She found that her training had gone for naught. Her voice was cracked and jagged and uneven and broken.
In that mellow pause, the child snuggled closer. She whispered in the dusk:
“You’re just like a real mother, Mrs. Theddon. I guess I know now why some of the babies at the Home stopped crying when I began to rock them to sleep.”
The future opened radiantly for Mrs. Gracia Theddon then. And the past dropped away, colorless and shallow and tinseled and wasted.
“Listen, dear,” she said finally. “I’m going to ask if you’ll do something for me.”