"One night--she had been drinking night and day, for a week--two or three women had been in, and while they drank I sat in a corner longing for them to go. They quarreled; my mother struck one of the women, and while they were swearing dreadfully, a policeman came in. It was Mr. Chester--that was the first time I ever saw him. I have told you about him, and how his child, poor, beautiful Isabel, came here with me; but I did not tell you that the nurse at Bellevue was my own mother. The doctors found out that she had been drinking, and sent her away after that night. A few weeks ago she came up here to work for the children. Nobody knew that she was my mother, but, oh! sir, she looked very ill, and I said to myself when she passed me without a word, only with black looks--I said, she is ill, I will take care of her; I will go to her at night with nice things that the matron gives me to eat--I will do without them myself, and, perhaps, this will make her love me. "I went up into the garret the first night, but she drove me away. I would not give up, but went again. She was very ill that night--living among that fever so long had poisoned all the pure breath she had left. She was crying when I went up to the bed; I knelt down by the bed and began to cry, too. She did not send me away. She did not strike me, though I thought it was for that when she lifted her hand, but she laid the hand on my head. Indeed she did, sir, and then I felt she might be my mother yet!" The child paused; the big tears that welled up from her heart were choking her. "I went to see her very often after that, for she was growing worse. I carried her nice things, and tried every way to make her love me. She was not always kind, but I didn't mind a little crossness now and then, for great hopes were in my heart. My father loved his wife, and I thought of him, and what a joy it would be if I, the poor thing he wanted to live for, could do something toward making her good enough to see him once more when she dies. "Sir, may I ask you one question? If you want a thing very much, and think and pray for it--does not God, sometimes, bring it all about when you least expect anything of the kind? It seemed to me as if He had done it when my mother complained of being so lonesome up there in the Hospital garret, and wished that she had something to read. She was a great reader, sir, once. I went down stairs, trembling like a leaf, and got the matron's Bible. She did not say a word against it, and I read to her a long time. After that she would ask me to read, and every day as she grew weaker and weaker, I could see that she was growing better, too.