Of course, I was glad to hear from you; you know, you and I have so
many old stories between us, that even if there was nothing else,
even if there was not a very sincere respect and affection, we
should always be glad to pass a nod. I say 'even if there was
not.' But you know right well there is. Do not suppose that I
shall ever forget those long, bitter nights, when I coughed and
coughed and was so unhappy, and you were so patient and loving with
a poor, sick child. Indeed, Cummy, I wish I might become a man
worth talking of, if it were only that you should not have thrown
away your pains.

Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes them brave and
noble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish love that moved us
to do them. 'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of
these.' My dear old nurse, and you know there is nothing a man can
say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife - my dear old
nurse, God will make good to you all the good that you have done,
and mercifully forgive you all the evil. And next time when the
spring comes round, and everything is beginning once again, if you
should happen to think that you might have had a child of your own,
and that it was hard you should have spent so many years taking
care of some one else's prodigal, just you think this - you have
been for a great deal in my life; you have made much that there is
in me, just as surely as if you had conceived me; and there are
sons who are more ungrateful to their own mothers than I am to you.
For I am not ungrateful, my dear Cummy, and it is with a very
sincere emotion that I write myself your little boy,

Louis.