Mrs. Sandford gave another glance around her. The table in the centre of the room was partially covered with a cloth, and laid apparently for that meal which is called a heavy tea. There was a plate of ham, a quantity of watercress, a pat of butter, and a little loaf, and by the side of all this a battered old tea-tray with the japanning half worn off, on which were the tea things, the big cup and saucer and jug of blue milk, familiar to the dwellers in London lodgings. Mrs. Sandford cast a glance at all this with apparent satisfaction. ‘It is not what you have been used to,’ she said; ‘but it is not bad for the kind of thing. I hope you will be able to make yourself comfortable here. Susie will come and see you if she can to-night, and to-morrow at ten I shall expect you at the hospital. I must go now. Good-night.’ She paused a moment, turned back, laid her hand on his shoulder, and kissed him lightly on the forehead. It was the first time she had done so, and John had a feeling that it was because of the presence of the spectator, who might have made remarks upon the cold parting of the mother and son--this thought gave him a feeling of horror and repulsion not to be described. He grew red, as with a sense of insult. She had come to the place where she was known, and kissed him to keep up appearances. The youth could have struck her as he drew his cheek away. Perhaps she too felt that what she had done was not natural. She withdrew too with something like an angry colour rising over her features. Motives are so mixed, and human sentiments so complex. Perhaps it was because of the presence of that spectator that she had kissed her son; and yet there were many other feelings in her mind; quiverings of long-suppressed emotion, and an impulse in which there were many tender elements. But she saw what he thought, and there was enough truth in it to make it a new sting to her that he should have thought so. She went away back to her cab without another word, and he stood and watched while it crossed the street and drew up at a door a short distance off, a side door in the great building with its many lights. There he stood gazing while the cabman delivered his load of packages. He ought to have helped, perhaps; to have gone with her and seen her safely landed. But he stood instead at a distance, looking on with unfriendly eyes, with his mother’s kiss still burning and stinging. How strange that it should be so! He stayed there till she had disappeared with all her goods, and the cab had driven away; then returned to the little parlour of his lodgings alone.