She looked at me with the greatest surprise. "Do you mean to say," she
answered, "that you do not know I have a mother--that there is a mother
of the house?"

"How should I know, Yoletta?" I returned. "I have not heard you address
any one as mother; besides, how is one to know anything in a strange
place unless he is told?"

"How strange, then, that you never asked till now! There is a mother of
the house--the mother of us all, of you since you were made one of us;
and it happens, too, that I am her daughter--her only child. You have
not seen her because you have never asked to be taken to her; and she is
not among us because of her illness. For very long she has been
afflicted with a malady from which she cannot recover, and for a whole
year she has not left the Mother's Room."

She spoke with eyes cast down, in a low and very sad voice. It was only
too plain now that in my ignorance I had been guilty of a grave breach
of the etiquette or laws of the house; and anxious to repair my fault,
also to know more of the one female in this mysterious community who had
loved, or at all events had known marriage, I asked if I might see her.

"Yes," she answered, after some hesitation, still standing with eyes
cast down. Then suddenly, bursting into tears, she exclaimed: "Oh,
Smith, how could you be in the world and not know that there is a mother
in every house! How could you travel and not know that when you enter a
house, after greeting the father, you first of all ask to be taken to
the mother to worship her and feel her hand on your head? Did you not
see that we were astonished and grieved at your silence when you came,
and we waited in vain for you to speak?"