fair!" She felt the
thrill of his tender voice; perceived the impression: the buzz, the
subsiding confusion, the spell-bound stillness. "Take, oh, take me to
your care!" It was in her heart to strike her breasts--to cry out that
this was her son, born of her; her bosom his place....

When the departing throng had thinned in the aisle, she stepped from
the pew, and stood waiting. There passed, then, a lady in rich
attire--sweet-faced, of exquisite manner. A bluff, ruddy young man
attended her.

"Did you like the music?" he asked--a conventional question: everywhere
repeated.

"Perfectly lovely!" she replied. "A wonderful voice! And such a
pretty child!"

"I wonder," said he, "who the boy can be?"

Acting upon ingenuous impulse, the boy's mother overtook the man,
timidly touched his elbow, looked into his eyes, her own bright with
proud love.

"He is my son," she said.

The lady turned in amazement. In a brief, appraising glance, she
comprehended the whole woman; the outre gown, the pencilled eyebrows,
the rouged cheeks, the bleached hair. She took the man's arm.

"Come!" she said.

The man yielded. He bowed--smiled in an embarrassed way, flushing to
his sandy hair: turned his back.

"How strange!" the lady whispered.

The woman was left alone in the aisle--not chagrined by the rebuff,
being used to this attitude, sensitive no longer: but now knowing, for
the first time, that the world into which her child had gone would not
accept her.... The church was empty. The organ had ceased. One by
one the twinkling lights were going out. The boy came bounding down
the aisle. With a glad little cry he leaped into her waiting arms....

[Illustration: Tailpiece to _The Chorister_]

[Illustration: Headpiece to _Alienation_]

_ALIENATION_

This night, after a week of impatient expectation, they were by the
curate's permission to spend together in the Box Street tenement. It
was the boy's first return to the little room overlooking the river.
Thither they hurried through the driving snow, leaning to the blasts,
unconscious of the bitterness of the night: the twain in high
spirits--the boy chattering, merrily, incoherently, as he trotted at
his silent mother's side. Very happy, now, indeed, they raced up the
stair, rioting up flight after flight, to top floor rear, where there
was a cheery fire, a kettle bubbling on the stove, a lamp turned low--a
feeling of warmth and repose and welc