"Why? Do I look like your father's wife?"
"Well, yes; 'cept he seems fond of you, and you of him. Can I call
you Mother?"
Then a yearning look came over the child and he began to cry. Sue
thereupon could not refrain from instantly doing likewise, being a
harp which the least wind of emotion from another's heart could make
to vibrate as readily as a radical stir in her own.
"You may call me Mother, if you wish to, my poor dear!" she said,
bending her cheek against his to hide her tears.
"What's this round your neck?" asked Jude with affected calmness.
"The key of my box that's at the station."
They bustled about and got him some supper, and made him up a
temporary bed, where he soon fell asleep. Both went and looked at
him as he lay.
"He called you Mother two or three times before he dropped off,"
murmured Jude. "Wasn't it odd that he should have wanted to!"
"Well--it was significant," said Sue. "There's more for us to think
about in that one little hungry heart than in all the stars of the
sky... I suppose, dear, we must pluck up courage, and get that
ceremony over? It is no use struggling against the current, and I
feel myself getting intertwined with my kind. Oh Jude, you'll love
me dearly, won't you, afterwards! I do want to be kind to this
child, and to be a mother to him; and our adding the legal form to
our marriage might make it easier for me."
IV
Their next and second attempt thereat was more deliberately made,
though it was begun on the morning following the singular child's
arrival at their home.
Him they found to be in the habit of sitting silent, his quaint and
weird face set, and his eyes resting on things they did not see in
the substantial world.
"His face is like the tragic mask of Melpomene," said Sue. "What is
your name, dear? Did you tell us?"
"Little Father Time is what they always called me. It is a nickname;
because I look so aged, they say."
"And you talk so, too," said Sue tenderly. "It is strange, Jude,
that these preternaturally old boys almost always come from new
countries. But what were you christened?"
"I never was."
"Why was that?"
"Because, if I died in damnation, 'twould save the expense of a
Christian funeral."