m save when her baby needed her. But it all
seemed so useless, so in vain, when one dark morning the doctor
said, "We had better send for his father and mother."

Poor Lydia! Her heart was nearly breaking. She hurriedly told the
doctor the cause that had kept them away so long, adding, "Is it so
bad as that? Oh, doctor, _must I send for them_? They don't want to
come." Before the good man could reply, there was a muffled knock
at the door. Then Milly's old wrinkled face peered in, and Milly's
voice said whisperingly, "His people--they here."

"Whose people? Who are here?" almost gasped Lydia.

"His father and his mother," answered the old woman. "They
downstairs."

For a brief moment there was silence. Lydia could not trust herself
to speak, but ill as he was, George's quick Indian ear had caught
Milly's words. He murmured, "Mother! mother! Oh, my mother!"

"Bring her, quickly, _quickly_!" said Lydia to the doctor.

It seemed to the careworn girl that a lifetime followed before the
door opened noiselessly, and there entered a slender little old
Indian woman, in beaded leggings, moccasins, "short skirt," and a
blue "broadcloth" folded about her shoulders. She glanced swiftly
at the bed, but with the heroism of her race went first towards
Lydia, laid her cheek silently beside the white girl's, then looked
directly into her eyes.

"Lydia!" whispered George, "Lydia!" At the word both women moved
swiftly to his side. "Lydia," he repeated, "my mother cannot speak
the English, but her cheek to yours means that you are her blood
relation."

The effort of speech almost cost him a swoon, but his mother's
cheek was now against his own, and the sweet, dulcet Mohawk
language of his boyhood returned to his tongue; he was speaking it
to his mother, speaking it lovingly, rapidly. Yet, although Lydia
never understood a word, she did not feel an outsider, for the old
mother's hand held her own, and she knew that at last the gulf was
bridged.

* * * * *

It was two days later, when the doctor pronounced George Mansion
out of danger, that the sick man said to his wife: "Lydia, it is
all over--the pain, the estrangement. My mother says that you are
her daughter. My father says that you are his child. They heard of
your love, your nursing, your sweetness. They want to know if you
will call them 'father, mother.' They love you, for you are one of
their own."

"At last, at last!" half sobbed the w