"Have you a father?" asked the woman.

"If you get one for me I have."

"David," she said, more serious than was usual with her, "if you
had one I should want him to look like you.... Here, little boy,
here, in your face I see your father."

The woman had moulded her cool hands to David's smooth, soft
cheeks, and was looking wistfully into the eyes of her little
boy. But abruptly he struggled free from her; he slipped to the
floor, mounted on a chair in front of the chiffonier and peeped
excitedly into the mirror. A long time he looked at the
tousle-headed reflection that looked earnestly back at him. He
frowned, and the boy in the glass frowned, too. He was a great
disappointment, that boy; he wasn't the teeniest bit like any
father that ever was. He was only a child in a white nighty.

David faced about; he got down off the chair, and he turned his
accusing eyes upon Mother. She had fooled her little boy; she had
told him a wrong story, and it was woful disillusionment.

"You cannot see him, David," she said, "because you have no
picture of him in your heart."

Well, then, did Mother have such a picture? If she did, why
could she not show him that picture? And please, Mother, where
did she keep that heart where the picture was?