“The mother whose place you took this afternoon. You never met her because she won’t take her meals here. She takes ’em with the children—eats with ’em same as she would with her own. She got the idea that it makes the children feel more like home, havin’ her eat at the table with ’em. There ain’t no doubt about it givin’ ’em better manners, though Mrs. Bossman says it’s not good discipline.” Miss Jessup then assured me that Mrs. Hoskins was the best mother at St. Rose. She was a widow and had lost her husband and two children before she was thirty. Ever since, for more than twenty years, she had been mothering motherless girls at St. Rose. The children under her care were the best trained, received the highest marks in their school, both in deportment and studies, and they were, one and all, devoted to their “mother.” But Mrs. Hoskins had not co-operated as cordially in carrying out Mrs. Bossman’s theories as that lady wished. One of these theories was forcing a child to eat all food left on its plate at the previous meal. She also objected to the children doing all the housework. She thought some work too heavy even for the older girls. Mrs. Bossman intended, according to Miss Jessup, to have me act as Mrs. Hoskins’ assistant for a couple of weeks, or as long as it might take for me to learn the ropes. Then she would discharge Mrs. Hoskins and install me as “mother.” “I ain’t sayin’ you wouldn’t make a good mother,” Miss Jessup wound up. “I dunno but what I believe you would make a first-class one. What I aims at is to get you to wait. I’ll be movin’ on soon—goin’ back to Chicago. If you would wait and take my cottage. I don’t want to see Mrs. Hoskins turned out. It would break her heart. That’s a fact. None of us wants her turned out. I’ll go at the end of the month if—if you want me to.” “May the Lord love you, woman!” I exclaimed, more moved than I cared to show. “I don’t want either Mrs. Hoskins’ job or yours. I wouldn’t have either as a gracious gift.” “What you goin’ to do? You’ve got to move into her cottage in the mornin’. When the time comes—when Mrs. Bossman discharges Mrs. Hoskins——” “She’ll never discharge her on my account,” I interrupted. “As for what I am going to do—how I’m going to get out of it, I haven’t the slightest idea. But you let me sleep on it—you’ll know in the morning.” The next morning when I went down to breakfast I took my bag with me. After the meal, the matron not having made her appearance, I bade her assistant good-by. Beyond saying that Mrs. Bossman’s methods did not appeal to me a statement seemed unnecessary. CHAPTER IX RODMAN HALL: CHILDREN’S HOME Back again on the now deserted top floor of the rooming-house, I turned once more to the help-wanted column. An advertisement about which Alice and I had often speculated during the winter caught my eye: