rbara, who came to see them some few days after Michael
had been installed here, found a good deal.

They had all had tea together, and afterwards Lady Ashbridge's nurse had
come down to fetch her upstairs to rest. And then Aunt Barbara surprised
Michael, for she came across the room to him, with her kind eyes full of
tears, and kissed him.

"My dear, I must say it once," she said, "and then you will know that it
is always in my mind. You have behaved nobly, Michael; it's a big word,
but I know no other. As for your father--"

Michael interrupted her.

"Oh, I don't understand him," he said. "At least, that's the best way to
look at it. Let's leave him out."

He paused a moment.

"After all, it is a much better plan than our living all three of us at
Ashbridge. It's better for my mother, and for me, and for him."

"I know, but how he could consent to the better plan," she said. "Well,
let us leave him out. Poor Robert! He and his golf. My dear, your father
is a very ludicrous person, you know. But about you, Michael, do you
think you can stand it?"

He smiled at her.

"Why, of course I can," he said. "Indeed, I don't think I'll accept that
statement of it. It's--it's such a score to be able to be of use, you
know. I can make my mother happy. Nobody else can. I think I'm getting
rather conceited about it."

"Yes, dear; I find you insufferable," remarked Aunt Barbara
parenthetically.

"Then you must just bear it. The thing is"--Michael took a moment to
find the words he searched for--"the thing is I want to be wanted. Well,
it's no light thing to be wanted by your mother, even if--"

He sat down on the sofa by his aunt.

"Aunt Barbara, how ironically gifts come," he said. "This was rather a
sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like this just as
her brain was failing. And yet that failure doesn't affect the quality
of her love. Is it something that shines through the poor tattered
fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain. It is she herself,
somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me. And you ask if I can stand
it?"

Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart seemed
extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara. She wished that
Sylvia could have seen him then in all the unconsciousness of what he
was doing so unquestioningly, or that she could have seen him as she
had with his mother during the last hour. Lady Ashbridge had insisted
on sitting close