Kind indeed her father and her brothers had always been to her.

They had watched over her with jealous fondness, and had taken all rougher tasks upon themselves, but the devotion of woman, which extends to all the minor details of life, she had never known.
She had never had a supper-table set out for her own especial pleasure with this and that dish to tempt her appetite, as Mrs.Otis set out hers that night.

A dish of a fine and sublimated porridge did Mrs.Otis make for her--a porridge mixed with cream and sprinkled with nutmeg and fat plums.

"I thought some hot porridge would do you good," said Mrs.Otis, when she sat the smoking bowl before Madelon.
Then she whispered low, that her son, who was putting another stick on the fire before coming to table, might not hear, "It's the same kind of porridge I had after my son was born--with cream and plums in it.

I used to think there never was anything so good." This porridge might well have possessed a flavor of the sweetest memories of motherhood to the older woman, but to the girl, wild with longing to be gone and carry out her purpose, manna from heaven would not have yielded its full measure of sweetness.
She would scarcely have eaten at all had not Jim Otis's mother remarked, as she watched her reluctant sips of the good porridge, "As I said just now, you ain't any daughter of mine, and I ain't any right to dictate, but if you want to get that man, whoever he is, out of prison, you'll have to eat enough to get some strength to do it." Simply placid as Mrs.Otis looked, she had often wisdom enough to gain her ends by means of that shrewd finesse of government which appeals to the reason of others as applied to the furthering of their own desires.
Madelon after that swallowed her porridge almost greedily, and when supper was over went up-stairs to bed, following Mrs.Otis as readily as any meek young daughter of her own might have done.