way she had wi' me. Ye're richt, laddie, there's naught like a
blessed mither to care for ye--an' ye never had the good o' one
yoursel'"--turning and looking at the boy, with an expression of
wondering pity on his face, as though that thought had occurred to
him now for the first time.

"No, I never had, you know; that's the worst of it. If I could only
remember jest the least bit about my mother, it wouldn't seem so bad,
but I can't remember nothing, not nothing."

"Puir lad! puir lad! I had na thocht o' that afoor. But, patience,
Ralph, patience; mayhap we'll find a mither for ye yet."

"Oh, Uncle Billy! if we could, if we only could! Do you know,
sometimes w'en I go down town, an' walk along the street, an' see
the ladies there, I look at ev'ry one I meet, an' w'en a real nice
beautiful one comes along, I say to myself, 'I wisht that lady was my
mother,' an' w'en some other one goes by, I say, 'I wonder if that
ain't my mother.' It don't do no good, you know, but it's kind o'
comfortin'."

"Puir lad!" repeated Billy, putting his arm around the boy and drawing
him up closer to his chair, "Puir lad!"

"You 'member that night I come home a-cryin', an' I couldn't tell w'at
the matter was? Well, it wasn't nothin' but that. I come by a house
down there in the city, w'ere they had it all lighted up, an' they
wasn't no curtains acrost the windows, an' you could look right in.
They was a havin' a little party there; they was a father an' a mother
an' sisters and brothers an' all; an' they was all a-laughin' an'