anks of the others. The daughter then fervently offered
them to the policeman.

"That's all right, lady," he said, and the incident had closed except
for her emotion at seeing him enter a police-station precisely across
the street, where they could have got a dozen policemen in a moment.

"Well," the father said, "we might as well go to our French _table
d'hote_ now."

"Oh," the son said, as if that reminded him, "the place seems to be
shut."

"Well, then, we might as well go back to the hotel," the father
decided. "I dare say we shall do quite as well there."

On the way the young people laughed over the affair and their escape
from it, especially at the strange appearance and disappearance of the
kind colored girl, with her tag of sentiment, and at the instant
compliance of the old woman with the suggestion of the policeman.

The father followed, turning the matter over in his mind. Did mere
motherhood hallow that old thing to the colored girl and her sort and
condition? Was there a superstition of motherhood among such people
which would endear this disreputable old thing to their affection and
reverence? Did such people hold mothers in tenderer regard than people
of larger means? Would a mother in distress or merely embarrassment
instantly appeal to their better nature as a case of want or sickness
in the neighborhood always appealed to their compassion? Would her
family now welcome the old thing home from her aberration more fondly
than the friends of one who had arrived in a carriage among them in a
good street? But, after all, how little one knew of other people! How
little one knew of one self, for that matter! How next to nothing one
knew of Somebody's Mother! It did not necessarily follow from anything
they knew of her that she was a mother at all. Her motherhood might be
the mere figment of that kind colored girl's emotional fancy. She
might be Nobody's Mother.

When it came to this the father laughed, too. Why, anyhow, were
mothers more sacred than fathers? If they had found an old man in that
old woman's condition on those steps, would that kind colored girl
have appealed to them in his behalf as Somebody's Father?

VI

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

He had gone down at Christmas, where our host
Had opened up his house on the Maine coast,
For the week's holidays, and we were all,
On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall,