He wheeled to Mrs.Duncan with a shining face.
"Were you fixing this warm food for me chickens or yours ?" he asked.
"It's for yours, Freckles," she said.

"I was afeared this cold weather they wadna lay good without a warm bite now and then." Duncan laughed as he stepped to the other room for his pipe; but Freckles faced Mrs.Duncan with a trace of every pang of starved mother-hunger he ever had suffered written large on his homely, splotched, narrow features.
"Oh, how I wish you were my mother!" he cried.
Mrs.Duncan attempted an echo of her husband's laugh.
"Lord love the lad!" she exclaimed.

"Why, Freckles, are ye no bright enough to learn without being taught by a woman that I am your mither?
If a great man like yoursel' dinna ken that, learn it now and ne'er forget it.

Ance a woman is the wife of any man, she becomes wife to all men for having had the wifely experience she kens! Ance a man-child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mither to all men, for the hearts of mithers are everywhere the same.

Bless ye, laddie, I am your mither!" She tucked the coarse scarf she had knit for him closer over his chest and pulled his cap lower over his ears, but Freckles, whipping it off and holding it under his arm, caught her rough, reddened hand and pressed it to his lips in a long kiss.