Yes, to be sure, she had such a picture, but it was not of
David's father; it was of someone else, for she had never seen
David's father. In her heart was still another picture: it was a
memory which had to do with the sad nativity of her little boy.
So sad an event it was that she had left off being a head nurse
at the hospital, in order to become a mother by proxy.

David might some day come to know that there was a fogyish,
bachelor doctor who was almost a father in the same sort of
way--almost, but not quite, for the child had been left not to
him, but to her. A home, likewise, was her inheritance, a very
pretty little home and all else that had once belonged to the
real mother of the little boy.

A brave death she had died, that kinless widow at the hospital.
And how could it have been otherwise, when so large a faith was
hers in the nurse whose arm had gone lovingly around her, and
whose voice, many and many a time, had given comfort and had
known finally how to smooth the way to death?

But it was the Doctor's hand, not the hand of the nurse, that had
gently closed the mother's eyes upon her last long sleep; and it
was he, not the nurse, who had turned wofully away, and stared
and stared and stared out of the window.

Grave pictures were these that Mother kept in her heart, and
David was not to know how much he troubled her when he fell to
questioning; and that is why, in the midst of his endless
inquiries, he was wont to encounter the Great Never Mind.