them when she said it. She had been looking straight
into his face. The look hurt, too, Bobby remembered. He did not know
what pity was, but it was that that hurt.

The night after he learned U at school Bobby decided to hazard
everything and ask Olga what the one in his name stood for. He could
not put it off any longer.

"Olga, what does the U in the middle o' my name stand for?" he broke
out, suddenly, while he was being unbuttoned for bed. "I know it's a
U, but I don't know a U-_what_. I've 'cided I won't go to bed till
I've found out."

Things had gone criss-cross. The old Norwegian woman was not in a
good humor.

"Unwelcome--that iss what it must stand for," she laughed
unpleasantly.

"Bobby Unwelcome!" Bobby laughed too. Then a piteous little
suspicion crept into his mind and began to grow. He turned upon Olga
sharply. "What does Unwelcome mean?" he demanded.

"Eh? Iss it not enough plain to you? Well, not wanted--that iss what
it means then."

"Not wanted,--not wanted." Bobby repeated the words over and over to
himself, not quite satisfied yet. They sounded bad--oh, very; but
perhaps Olga had got them wrong. She was not a United States person.
It would be easy for another kind of a person to get things wrong.
Still--"not wanted"--they certainly sounded very plain. And they
meant--Bobby gave a faint gasp, and suddenly his thoughts turned
dizzily round and round one terrible pivot--"not wanted." He sprang
away out of the nurse's hands and darted down the long, bright hall
to his mother's room. She was being dressed for a ball, and the room
was pitilessly light. She sat at a table with a little mirror before
her. Suddenly another face appeared in it with hers--a little,
scarred, red face, stamped deep with childish woe. The contrast
appalled her.

Bobby was not looking into the glass, but into her beautiful face.

"Is that what it stands for?" he demanded, breathlessly. "She said
so. Did she lie?"

"Robert! For Heaven's sake, child, stand away! You are tearing my
lace. What are you doing here? Why are you not in bed?"

"Does it stand for _that?_" he persisted.

"Does what stand for what? Look, you are crushing my dress. Stand
farther off. Don't you see, child?"

"She said the U in the middle o' my name stood for Not Wanted. Does
it? Tell me quick. Does it?"

The contrast of the two faces in her mirror hurt her like a blow. It
brought back all the disappointment and the wounded vanity of that
t