Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/107

 mother's face buried in her little boy's soft curls.

"The friend who had taken me there," resumed the newspaper woman, "swept me into the room in which the farewells were going on; and when they were over and almost everybody was gone, she introduced me to the nun. We talked for a moment, and then to my surprise she kissed me good-by as she had kissed the others. She left the room immediately, and so it happened that I had her very last moment in the world and her last caress. I told Miss Van Orden afterward that it did n't seem right for a stranger to get such a precious thing when it belonged by every right to somebody who really loved her. Miss Van Orden laughed and seemed to think there was no one who would have appreciated it any more than I did." A queer little quavering sound came from the big chair. Miss Herrick glanced at the woman there, and then turned her eyes toward the fire. The suspicion in her mind had become a certainty. "There is not much more to tell," she said, "except that later we were permitted to