happy, but they appeared to stir her to tenderness toward him.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked. "Do you need help in any way?"
"No'm."
"Is your mother kind to you?"
He thought of the dissolute, dead woman, who had said she was his mother; toward her his only feeling had been fear.
"Yes'm," he told her.
"Then she loves you. She might love you and still not be kind; but if she is kind she surely loves you. Love is what makes it terrible to be a mother. It is terrible to lose a child, but it must be almost as terrible to see one grow up. Mothers give children to the world without knowing what their children are going to grow up to be, and no matter what a child becomes they have to go on loving it. Of course, you don't understand me."
"No'm."
"You can understand this at least, that bad boys break their mothers' hearts and good boys make them happy."
