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290 with your nose in a book! Why, Nathan, you'll get to know too much for her if you don't look out!" roguishly she added.

Nathan reddened at that. He always reddened at the slightest reference to the curious circumstance that had knitted his life so closely into this white-haired little lady's and her son's. He never directly introduced the circumstance himself.

"Pass me my work-bag, Nathan, please," the little white-haired lady abruptly switched off. "Thank you." She opened it and proceeded to lay upon the table beside her some socks done up in balls. "Six pairs of old ones for you—all mended," she announced. "And six new ones, worked with your initial. Dark grays and dull greens, like the ones I always get for Robert. And this tie, to match the green ones."

The young man took the proffered tie. "It's very pretty," he said in confusion. "Mrs. Barton," he murmured, "when I think of you sewing for me like this, keeping me in shape—buying me things just as if—as if" He stopped.

"Say it, Nathan," burst out the woman impatiently. "Say it, child, or I will, for you. 'Just as if I were your own mother.' There!! My dear boy," the little lady's voice became suddenly grave. She put her hand on Nathaniel Cawthorne's arm. "Haven't I told you a dozen times that I feel like your own mother? Haven't I told you a dozen times that your coming into our lives just when you did, just when I found myself very lonely way out here in this big strange city, so far away from all my old friends, was a godsend to me?" She stopped a second. And in a still