"Thank you for telling me; but it's rather awful, isn't it, that any one
should have to think of her mother as Sylvia must? Why, my mother--" He
stopped, flushing as he thought of how commonplace, how homely and
ordinary, his mother had often seemed to him, how he had brooded over his
father's "unfortunate match." "My mother has worked her fingers to the
bone for all of us, and I believe she'd let herself be chopped in pieces
to help us gladly any day."

"Yes," assented Mr. Stevens, "I know she would. There are--several
different kinds of mothers in the world. It's a thousand pities Sylvia
did not have a fair show at a job of that sort. She would have been one
of the successful kind, I fancy."

"It would seem so," said Austin.




CHAPTER VI


New York City
August 25

DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER:

I'm going to lay in a stock of picture post-cards to send you, for if
things move at the same rate in Europe that they do in New York, I
certainly shan't have time to write many letters. But I'll send a good
long one to-night, anyhow. I always thought I'd like to live in the city,