"cottage mothers" who represented discipline over the boys. A father, in his first acquaintance with the term, had signified a grave man dressed in black who wore the symbol of the cross somewhere about his person. These early ideas of the meaning of the words "mother" and "father" had been supplemented later by recognition of a more intimate relation. But he had not seen anything particularly pleasant or desirable in the relation. He had seen indifferent mothers, oblivious of their children; virago mothers, who beat them; drunken mothers; mothers who regarded children as an asset and lived upon their earnings. His knowledge of fathers was that they, even more definitely still, represented unpleasant authority over children. In having neither he had felt a sense of freedom.
He took the card out of his pocket as he walked along, and spelled out and repeated the name which he had written on it—"Walter Wendell Markyn." The sick woman, he realized, had been "nuts" at the time when she had given him this name, and he did not deceive
