"I saw a little boy butchered to-day, and I shall never forget it. It is wicked to speak of Doctor Blake's clean cut work as butchery, but when you actually see a child's leg severed from its body, what else can you call it? "The reason that I am able to go through operations without fainting or crying is just this: _other people do_. The first time I stood by the operating table to pass the sterilized instruments to the assisting nurse, and saw the half naked doctors hung in rubber standing there preparing to carve their way through the naked flesh of the unconscious creature before them, I felt the kind of pang pass through my heart that seems to kill as it comes. I thought I died, or was dying,--and then I looked up and saw that every one else was ready for their work. So I drew a deep breath and became ready too. I don't think there is anything in the world too hard to do if you look at it that way. "The little boy loved me and I loved him. We had hoped against hope that we would be able to save his poor little leg, but it had to go. I held his hand while they gave him the chloroform. At his head sat Doctor Hathaway with his Christlike face, draped in the robe of the anesthetist. 'Take long breaths, Benny,' I said, and he breathed in bravely. It was over quickly. To-morrow, when he is really out of the ether, I have got to tell him what was done to him. Something happened to me while that operation was going on. He hasn't any mother. I think the spirit of the one who was his mother passed into me, and I knew what it would be like to be the mother of a son. Benny was not without what his mother would have felt for him if she had been at his side. I can't explain it, but that is what I felt. "To-night it is as black as ink outside. There are no stars. I feel as if there should be no stars. If there were, there might be some strange little bit of comfort in them that I could cling to. I do not want any comfort from outside to shine upon me to-night. I have got to draw all my strength from a source within, and I feel it welling up within me even now. "I wonder if I have been selfish to leave the people I love so long without any word of me. I think Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Beulah and Aunt Margaret all had a mother feeling for me. I am remembering to-night how anxious they used to be for me to have warm clothing, and to keep my feet dry, and not to work too hard at school. All those things that I took as a matter of course, I realize now were very significant and beautiful. If I had a child and did not know to-night where it would lie down to sleep, or on what pillow it would put its head, I know my own rest would be troubled. I wonder if I have caused any one of my dear mothers to feel like that. If I have, it has been very wicked and cruel of me." CHAPTER XXIV CHRISTMAS AGAIN