LOST SON RETURNS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20496, 22 February 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

LOST SON RETURNS.

HOW HE CAME BACK.

MOTHER AND HER BOY.

THE STRANGER IN THE CAFE

If ono bad to find tho happiest woman in tho' world to-day he should not seek her at a ball given by an American millionaire, or even in the palace where they celebrate tho wedding festivities of Belgium's princess and' Italy's prince. He should go straight to a cottage in tho French village of Givrechain. The woman who would open the door is neither young nor handsome. A lifetime's toil has coarsened her hands and a lifetime's grief has lined her face. She wears cheap, sturdy working clothes. But if she were asked sho would laugh all over her face and cry: "Yes, it is true; f am tho happiest woman in the world."

This is the woman's strange, true story, which has been setting all Paris talking. Long ago, when sho was the young mother of a three-year-old son, sho had a quarrel with her husband. Sho went out on an errand, returning to find that father and son had gone. She waited for them, fretting as tho time for the child's meal went by; but the minutes and the hours -and the days passed, and the footstep she was always expecting never came.

From that day onward the mother did not hear a word' from her husband. The weeks turned into years, and she did not know whether her husband and her son were dead or 1 alive., Perhaps it was luck for her that she was poor and was obliged to "work ;'""but; ' labour as she riiight, "she could- Trot make herself so weary and busy as to forget her little one. And so over 40 years passed. One dav the old woman was so tired and lonely that she went into a cafe. She had, no grandchildren to care : .for, and she craved for human company. So into the humble cafe she went, to gossip with the neighbours, because she had no home. Presently a stranger entered, a middleaged man. Ihe little village circle made him welcome and showed a friendly curiosity. Tie was a" miner, the man said, working in a pit at llensies., lie was a foreigner, was he not, someone asked him ? Nearly a Pole, and nearly an American, he replied, and yet a native of this village. The man went on to say that his father had left the place in 1885, and taken him to Ainorica as a baby. Soon after their arrival his father had died, but a charitable Polish family bad adopted him and brought liiin up to be a miner. Now that he "was getting on for fifty years of> ago ho felt lie wanted to see his native land and find some, relatives. Up sprang an old woman and poured out a string of questions. How breathlessly the "little group listened io his answers! How the old woman s face sparkled and glowed as the man gave names and dates! Then at last she was ablo to say: "I am your mother!"

Tho proud mother had lost a son of three and found ono of 47. lie who could never 'recall a mother's love found it storecl up and waiting for him, like a fortune which bad waited an heir to claim it for 44 years.