Bonbright stopped in the library door, for he saw there not only his father, whom he had expected to see, but his mother also.  He had not foreseen this.  It made the thing harder to tell, for he realized in an instant how his mother would receive the news.  He wished he had been less abrupt, but here he was and there could be no drawing back now.  His mother was first to see him.

“Bonbright...” she said, rising.

He walked to her and kissed her, not speaking.

“Where have you been?  Your father and I have been terribly worried.  Why did you stay away like this, without giving us any word?”

“I’m sorry if I’ve worried you, mother,” he said, but found himself dumb when he tried to offer an explanation of his absence.

“You have worried us,” said his father, sharply.  “You had no business to do such a thing.  How were we to know something hadn’t happened to you—­with the strike going on?”

“It was very inconsiderate,” said his mother.

There fell a silence awkward for Bonbright.  His parents were expecting some explanation.  He had come to give that explanation, but his mother’s presence complicated the situation, made it more difficult.  There had never been that close confidence between Mrs. Foote and Bonbright which should exist between mother and son.  He had never before given much thought to his relations with her; had taken them as a matter of course.  He had not given to her that love which he had seen manifested by other boys for their mothers, and which puzzled him.  She had never seemed to expect it of him.  He had been accustomed to treat her with grave respect and deference, for she was the sort of person who seems to require and to be able to exact deference.  She was a very busy woman, busy with extra-family concerns.  Servants had carried on the affairs of the household.  Nurses, governesses, and such kittle-cattle had given to Bonbright their sort of substitute for mother care.  Not that Mrs. Foote had neglected her son—­as neglect is understood by many women of her class.  She had seen to it rigidly that his nurses and tutors were efficient.  She had seen to it that he was instructed as she desired, and his father desired, him to be instructed.  She had not neglected him in a material sense, but on that highest and sweetest sense of pouring out her affection on him in childhood, of giving him her companionship, of making her love compel his love—­there she had been neglectful. ...  But she was not a demonstrative woman.  Even when he was a baby she could not cuddle him and wonder at him and regard him as the most wonderful thing in creation. ...  She had never held him to her breast as God and nature meant mothers to hold their babies.  A mercenary breast had nourished him.