"Thank you for telling me; but it's rather awful, isn't it, that any one should have to think of her mother as Sylvia must? Why, my mother--" He stopped, flushing as he thought of how commonplace, how homely and ordinary, his mother had often seemed to him, how he had brooded over his father's "unfortunate match." "My mother has worked her fingers to the bone for all of us, and I believe she'd let herself be chopped in pieces to help us gladly any day." "Yes," assented Mr. Stevens, "I know she would. There are--several different kinds of mothers in the world. It's a thousand pities Sylvia did not have a fair show at a job of that sort. She would have been one of the successful kind, I fancy." "It would seem so," said Austin. CHAPTER VI New York City August 25 DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER: I'm going to lay in a stock of picture post-cards to send you, for if things move at the same rate in Europe that they do in New York, I certainly shan't have time to write many letters. But I'll send a good long one to-night, anyhow. I always thought I'd like to live in the city, as you know, but a few days of this has already given me a sort of breathless feeling that I ought always to be on the move, whether there's anything special to do or not. The noise never stops for one minute, night or day, and the streets are perfect miracles of light and dirt and _hurry_. This whole flat could be put right into our dining-room, and we'd hardly notice it at that, and _hot!_ Mr. Stevens says in the winter he nearly freezes to death, but I can't believe it.