Well, there was Tennelly's mother! Dignified, white-haired, beautiful,
dominant in her home and clubs, charming to her guests; but--he could
just fancy how she would raise her lorgnette and look "Bonnie" Brentwood
over. There would be no room in that grand house for a girl like Bonnie.
Bonnie! How the name suited her! He had a strange protective feeling
about that girl, not as if she were like the other girls he knew;
perhaps it was a sort of a "Christ-brother" feeling, as the minister had
suggested. But to go on with the list of mothers--wasn't there one
anywhere to whom he could appeal? Gila's mother? Pah! That painted,
purple image of a mother! Her own daughter needed to find a real mother
somewhere. She couldn't mother a stranger! Mothers! Why weren't there
enough real ones to go around? If he had only had a mother, a real one,
himself, who had lived, she would have been one to whom he could have
told Bonnie's story, and she would have understood!
He looked into the pictured eyes on the wall and an idea came to him. It
was like an answer to prayer. Stephen Marshall's mother! Why hadn't he
thought of her before? She was that kind of a mother of course, or
Stephen Marshall would not have been the man he was! If the Bonnie girl
could only get to her for a little while! But would she take her? Would
she understand? Or might she be too overcome with her own loss to have
been able to rally to life again? He looked into the strong motherly
face and was sure _not_.
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