“No, you haven’t changed! You haven’t changed!” sighed the weary little man; and the tone in which he uttered these plaintive words seemed drawn from a vast warehouse of accumulated school-hats⁠—shelves upon shelves of hats⁠—the burden of which seemed weighing him down in a Dead Sea of diurnal desolation.

“ Your mother is your real mother, isn’t she?” interrupted Olwen in a shrill voice, gazing at Wolf from the protection of Mattie’s knees.

Providence came to his rescue with an answer that was really quite an inspiration.

“Mothers are as mothers do ,” he responded.