She had never had a supper-table set out for her own especial pleasure with this and that dish to tempt her appetite, as Mrs. Otis set out hers that night. A dish of a fine and sublimated porridge did Mrs. Otis make for her--a porridge mixed with cream and sprinkled with nutmeg and fat plums. "I thought some hot porridge would do you good," said Mrs. Otis, when she sat the smoking bowl before Madelon. Then she whispered low, that her son, who was putting another stick on the fire before coming to table, might not hear, "It's the same kind of porridge I had after my son was born--with cream and plums in it. I used to think there never was anything so good." This porridge might well have possessed a flavor of the sweetest memories of motherhood to the older woman, but to the girl, wild with longing to be gone and carry out her purpose, manna from heaven would not have yielded its full measure of sweetness. She would scarcely have eaten at all had not Jim Otis's mother remarked, as she watched her reluctant sips of the good porridge, "As I said just now, you ain't any daughter of mine, and I ain't any right to dictate, but if you want to get that man, whoever he is, out of prison, you'll have to eat enough to get some strength to do it." Simply placid as Mrs. Otis looked, she had often wisdom enough to gain her ends by means of that shrewd finesse of government which appeals to the reason of others as applied to the furthering of their own desires. Madelon after that swallowed her porridge almost greedily, and when supper was over went up-stairs to bed, following Mrs. Otis as readily as any meek young daughter of her own might have done. The spirit of resistance was laid for the time in this poor Madelon Hautville, but it had yielded, after all, more to the will of her own reason than to Jim Otis's mother or the weariness of her own flesh. When Mrs. Otis came down-stairs she was flushed with pleasant motherly victory. "She's drunk all that hot cordial," she said to her son, "every drop of it, and I've tucked her into bed with the extra comfortables over her, an' she eat quite a good supper, an' I told her to go right to sleep, and I guess she will." "If she don't she'll be down sick," said Jim, sternly. He sat by the fire, tuning his fiddle. "She can't hear your fiddle so it'll keep her awake, can she?" asked Mrs. Otis, anxiously. "Of course she can't, up in the front chamber, with all the doors shut. Wouldn't have touched it if she could." "Well, I don't s'pose she can. Jim--" Jim twanged a string. "What is it, mother?" "I don't want to have you think I'm interferin', Jim. I know you're grown-up now, and I know there's things a young man might not want to tell his mother till he gets ready, but I do kind of want to know one thing, Jim." Jim tightened the G string. He bent his face low over his violin. "I don't know as I've ever kept much back from you, mother," he said, soberly.