"Don't he want her now ?" "No, darling," said Cynthia; "he is not here; he has been gone away two years, and he had left off his baby curls and his dresses, and stopped playing with her for a year before that." Cynthia sighed and drew down her mouth, and Ellen looked at her lovingly and wonderingly.
"Be you his mother ?" she asked, piteously; then, before Cynthia could answer, her own lip quivered and she sobbed out again, even while she hugged her doll-child to her bosom, "I want my mother! I want my mother!" All that day the struggle went on.

Cynthia Lennox, leading her little guest, who always bore the doll, traversed the fine old house in search of distraction, for the heart of the child was sore for its mother, and success was always intermittent.

The music-box played, the pictures were explained, and even old trunks of laid-away treasures ransacked.

Cynthia took her through the hot-houses and gave her all the flowers she liked to pick, to still that longing cry of hers.

Cynthia Lennox had fine hot-houses kept by an old colored man, the husband of her black cook.