prayer and he felt that somehow the Presence got close to him, so that
questions that had perplexed him were made clear.

As he stood that night looking about the plain walls, his eyes fell upon
that picture of Stephen Marshall's mother. A mother! Ah! if there were a
mother somewhere to whom that girl could go! Some one who would
understand her; be gentle and tender with her; love her, as he should
think a real mother would do--what a difference that would make!

He began to think over all the women he knew--all the mothers. There
were not so many of them. Some of the professors' wives who had sons and
daughters of their own? Well, they might be all well enough for their
own sons and daughters, but there wasn't one who seemed likely to want
to behave in a very motherly way to a stranger like his waif of a girl.
They were nice to the students, polite and kind to the extent of one tea
or reception apiece a year, but that was about the limit.

Well, there was Tennelly's mother! Dignified, white-haired, beautiful,
dominant in her home and clubs, charming to her guests; but--he could
just fancy how she would raise her lorgnette and look "Bonnie" Brentwood
over. There would be no room in that grand house for a girl like Bonnie.
Bonnie! How the name suited her! He had a strange protective feeling
about that girl, not as if she were like the other girls he knew;
perhaps it was a sort of a "Christ-brother" feeling, as the minister had
suggested. But to go on with the list of mothers--wasn't there one
anywhere to whom he could appeal? Gila's mother? Pah! That painted,
purple image of a mother! Her own daughter needed to find a real mother
somewhere. She couldn't mother a stranger! Mothers! Why weren't there
enough real ones to go around? If he had only had a mother, a real one,
himself, who had lived, she would have been one to whom he could have