Mrs. Procter approached until she stood close to Suzanna. She looked down into the mutinous little face. She had come intending to scold, but something electric about the child kept hasty words back. At length: "Aren't you going to speak to me, Suzanna?" she said. Suzanna did not answer immediately. That strange, awful thought that her very own mother had been unjustly irritable held her tongue-tied. At length words, short, curt, came: "You weren't _all right_ to me this morning, Mother," she said, raising her stormy eyes. "Yesterday you were nice to me when I was a princess. Today you were cross because Maizie couldn't understand, and she never understands. You never were cross about that before." She gazed straight back into her mother's face--"I'm mad at the whole world." What perfection the child expects of the mother! No human deviations! Mrs. Procter sighed. How could she live out her child's exalted ideal of her! She looked helplessly at Suzanna. The eyes lifted to hers lacked the wonted expression of perfect belief, of passionate admiration. That this first little daughter, so close to her heart fibers, should in any degree turn from her, pierced the mother. She put her arms about the unyielding small figure. "Suzanna, little daughter," she whispered. "Mother is sometimes tired, but always, always she loves you." The response was immediate. With a little cry Suzanna pressed her lips to her mother's. All her reticence was gone. This mother who enfolded her stood once more the unwavering star that guided Suzanna's life. "You see, little girl," Mrs. Procter said after a few moments, "mother sometimes has a great deal to think about--and baby was cross." "Oh, mother, dear, I'll help you," cried Suzanna. "I'll always be good to you and when I'm grown up I'll buy you silk dresses and pretty hats and take you to hear beautiful music." Later they went downstairs together. In the kitchen Maizie was amusing the baby as he sat in his high chair. She looked around as Suzanna entered: "Are you going to see Drusilla now," asked Maizie. "Who's Drusilla?" asked Mrs. Procter with interest. Now Suzanna had not told her mother of her new friend. She had wished to keep in character, and a princess, she felt, was rather secretive and aloof. But now the renewed closeness she felt to her mother opened her heart. "Yesterday when I was a princess, living my very own first tucked-in day, I walked and walked, and at last came to a little house with a garden," she said, "and there was an old lady with no one to call her by her first name--and so I'm going to call her Drusilla." "Is she a little old lady with white hair, and curls on each side of her face?" asked Mrs. Procter. "Yes," said Suzanna. "Why, she's Mr. Graham Woods Bartlett's mother, and she's a little--" Mrs. Procter hesitated believing it wiser to leave her sentence unfinished. "A little what, mother?" asked Suzanna anxiously.