When he came back his pal was hunched over the table with a pencil and a scrawled sheet of paper. Collins sat down opposite. A genial glow tingled inside him. His errand had been successful.

“Obeyin’ orders?” he asked jovially, raising an eyebrow toward the placard. The kid ignored him. He was writing feverishly. Collins sat still, regarding the placard with half-shut, musing eyes. “ ‘When Did You Write Your Mother Last?’ ” he murmured. His lips twisted in a bitter smile. He put his arms on the table and pillowed his head on them. The stillness of the room was broken by three soft sounds—the click of the battered clock on the wall, the heavy breathing of the readers, and the tap, tap of the kid’s pencil on the paper. Five minutes passed. Collins felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You can’t sleep here,” said the room clerk.

“Eh?” said Collins, “I wasn’t asleep.”

The clerk started back to his desk. Collins got to his feet and followed him. “How much for paper and an envelope?”

“Two cents.”

Collins produced the coins. He went back to the table and sat down. After an infinite search he brought forth a stump of a pencil from somewhere in the depths of his being. He began to write. Slowly, haltingly with a prodigious effort the words came. His copious speaking vocabulary, adapted to the demands of a hundred varying tales of his roving life, suddenly seemed to have vanished before the task of composing a simple letter. It was years since he had written anything but his name. But gradually, slowly, the page began to fill with crazily-fashioned words looking like so many hen tracks. After a time, Collins glancing up found the kid’s eyes on him.

“Who the hell you writin’ to?”

“Who the hell’s askin’?”

Deliberately the kid leaned over and read the superscription—“Dearest Mother.” Collins jerked the letter away. “If you weren’t my pal, I’d bean you for that.”

The kid was shaking with silent laughter. “Writin’ to your maw! Forget it. Yer dippy.”

“Who’re you writin’ to?”

“What’s it to yuh?”

“Don’t kid me, cully. You’re writin’ to yourn. There ain’t no law ’gainst my doin’ the same.”

“Forget it!” said the kid. “You never had no maw. Tole me yerself you was brung up in an orphan pen.”

Collins failed to answer. He was suddenly busy with his writing. It was true, Collins had never known a mother. But that fact had never bothered him and it did not bother now. For his fervid imagination was aglow visualizing a perfect mother—his mother, to whom he was pouring out his heart in a badly scrawled letter—abasing himself before her love, which he was sure had followed him over his long, starved years of wandering; castigating himself in the light of her certain forgiveness. He blessed her in words, wrung from the depths of his soul, that he had never revealed to any man; begged her still to cherish her faith, that he knew had many times been sorely tried, for soon he was coming home. Home—to her.

The kid had long ago finished his letter and gone to his bunk, when Collins wrote: “Affecshunitly, your son” and tucked the letter away in his coat.