"How nice that will be. Won't you be glad to see her?"

"In a way I will," was the slow, doubtful reply. "But I'm afraid that
she'll want to take me away."

"Wouldn't you like to go with your mother? She must long for you so
much."

"But I don't know her, you see. She's a stranger to me. I know that I
ought to love my mother, but somehow I can't."

"Oh!" The exclamation came suddenly from the woman's lips. She
clasped her hands before her, and stared hard into space. So this was
the outcome of it all? she said to herself. This was all that she had
gained by her years of struggle and self-denial. She had won fame and
money, but what did they amount to when her only boy was a stranger to
her, and knew not what it was to love his mother?

"You write to her, I suppose," she at last remarked.

"Oh, yes. Every week I get a letter, and I always answer it. She
sends me money, too."

"Does she? Isn't that nice. You must have plenty of spending money,
then."

"No," and Rod shook his head. "Grandad puts it all into the bank for
me. It is to stay there, so he says, until I grow up, and it will be
enough then to send me to college."