cite her
imagination into a
passion of love or fear;
and his memory seems to have vanished from her
dull brain as a shadow passes away upon a white
screen. She lives in the
cottage and works for Miss
Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for everybody, and
the child is 'Amy Foster's boy.' She calls him
Johnny--which means Little John.
"It is impossible to say whether this name re-
calls anything to her. Does she ever think of the
past? I have seen her
hanging over the boy's cot
in a very
passion of
maternaltenderness. The lit-
tle fellow was lying on his back, a little frightened
at me, but very still, with his big black eyes, with
his fluttered air of a bird in a snare. And looking
at him I seemed to see again the other one--the
father, cast out
mysteriously by the sea to perish
in the
supremedisaster of
loneliness and despair."
End