boiling water, and in a few seconds brought to the top intact, to be
placed upon the awaiting toast.

"You're awful quick, Mrs. Reynolds," she started to say when a knock
sounded upon the door.

The door slowly opened and, alone, Suzanna's mother entered.

She stood just looking in. She was pale, her eyes wide, languid, shadows
beneath them as though she had not slept. But those same tired eyes
lightened as they fell upon Suzanna.

"Mother-eyes," the phrase grew in Suzanna's heart. She should never in
all her life forget that look of longing, of love.

And somehow another impression, new, almost unbelievable, came to
Suzanna. Her mother was _young_, for wasn't that yearning note in her
voice; that tentative little gesture; her whole questioning attitude,
all her seekings, but expressions of her youngness? She wasn't after all
far removed from her little daughter, not for this minute, anyway. A
delicious sense of comradeship with this mother flooded the child.

And the mother stood and looked at her child, almost as for the first
time, at least with a sense of newness, as though Suzanna had been born
anew to her.

In the night a far reaching understanding had come to her. It came out
of her conclusion to strike a blow at the child's oversensitiveness by a
full dose of ridicule; by accusing her of affectation, a clever playing
to the gallery; this when the night was early, and the mother still