I had met Mrs. Duncan, and I knew her type all too well.  Alfred is her only child, and she adores him, naturally, but it is adoration so mingled with selfishness and tyranny that it is incapable of considering the welfare of its object.

Mrs. Duncan was always jealous of any happiness which came to her son through another source than herself.  That type of mother love is to be encountered every day, and that type of mother believes herself to be the most devoted creature on earth; while the fact is, she sits for ever in the boudoir of her mentality, gazing at her own reflection.  She loves her children because they also reflect herself, and is incapable of unselfish pleasure in their happiness apart from her.

You will remember I urged you to wait until you could have a home, however humble, alone with your husband, and even at the cost of that most undesirable condition, a long engagement.

But you assured me with much spirit that you had every confidence in your power to win Mrs. Duncan’s heart, and to crown her declining years with peace and happiness.

As well talk of decking a porcupine with wreaths of flowers, and making it a household pet, to coddle and caress.

When I congratulated Mrs. Duncan on her son’s engagement to such a sweet, bright girl as my cousin, she assumed a martyr expression and said, “She hoped he would be happy, even if her own heart must suffer the pain of losing an only son.”

“But,” I urged, “he really adds to your life by bringing you the companionship of a lovely daughter.  My cousin will, I am sure, prove such to you.”

“I have no doubt your cousin is a most estimable girl,” Madame Duncan answered, with dignity, “but I have never yet felt the need of any close companion save my son.  You, having no children, are excusable for not understanding my feelings, now when another claims his thoughts.”

“Yet the world is maintained by such occurrences,” I replied.  “You took some mother’s son, or you would not have had your own.”

With austere self-righteousness Mrs. Duncan corrected me.

“I married an orphan,” she said.

“How thoughtful of you,” I responded.  “But you see it is not lack of thought, only an accident of fate, which has prevented my cousin from marrying an orphan.  There are not enough desirable orphans to keep our young women supplied with husbands, you know.”

I think Mrs. Duncan suspected me of covert sarcasm, for she changed the topic of conversation.  But I heard her afterward talking to a bevy of women on the sorrow of giving up a child after having reared him to manhood’s estate, and her listeners all seemed duly sympathetic.

Of course, my dear Ruth, there is an element of sadness in the happiest of marriages for the parents of children.  I think it is particularly sad when a mother gives up a daughter, whose every thought she has shared, and whose every pleasure she has planned, and sees her embark upon the uncertain ocean of marriage, with a strange pilot at the helm.