"Well, you see, Hilda, Mary Vincent has been like his mother so long that when I come home I don't like to disturb the existing order of things. She, dear woman, would utterly efface herself if she had the least suspicion of my longing to do everything for Jacky once in a while. But when I come home she thinks I need rest, and am to be waited upon, and will have me lie in bed in the morning while she does everything for both of us." She sighed a little wistful sigh, and then smiled. "But I always say to myself that I am Jacky's mother, and that is enough happiness for me. I can yield the rest to her who loves him so much also, and has never had a child of her own. It is so long since I have had things to do for Jacky that I daresay I should be awkward and unaccustomed now." "Poor Freda!" I said again. "And rich Freda," she laughed. "I will confess to you, Hilda, that I got over my first great pang when I let my friend bathe Jacky while he was yet a baby. That was--" She broke off abruptly, and I knew she had been going to say "after Jim died", and then had choked over it. "She had been so good to us--to me and Jim--that when I saw she was hungry for the child, I stood aside. She never guessed that it cost me anything, dear soul! I cannot understand now how mothers give up the personal care of their babies to anyone else if they can help it. In that way, at least, rich women are not so happy as poor women." "But the boarding-house, Freda?" I said. "Ah, yes! I was forgetting. The money was very small, but having Jacky whenever I wished, as the woman said I might, outweighed everything, so I went. Mary thought, too, that the duties, being light, would not wear me out, as I have been worn out where there were half-a-dozen energetic children. But I soon found that I was to be a kind of white slave. I was to be housemaid and housekeeper and hostess all rolled into one. Even at the hour when a servant's duties are over, mine were going on. If Mrs. Tatlow--that was her name--saw me sitting still for a moment she found new work for me. Why, after a hard day I have sat up till two in the morning mending house-linen. There were years of arrears of mending, all waiting for me." "Why did you stay when you found what it was like?"