So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed.  The old housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite enough for Mrs. Bagnet’s confirmation, even if she could see the mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their relationship.

Not a rustle of the housekeeper’s dress, not a gesture, not a word betrays her.  She stands looking at him as he writes on, all unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her emotions.  But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent.  Mrs. Bagnet understands them.  They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief, of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less, and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such touching language that Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes brim up with tears and they run glistening down her sun-brown face.

“George Rouncewell!  Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!”

The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on his knees before her.  Whether in a late repentance, whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.

“My George, my dearest son!  Always my favourite, and my favourite still, where have you been these cruel years and years?  Grown such a man too, grown such a fine strong man.  Grown so like what I knew he must be, if it pleased God he was alive!”

She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time.  All that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of old girls as she is.

“Mother,” says the trooper when they are more composed, “forgive me first of all, for I know my need of it.”

Forgive him!  She does it with all her heart and soul.  She always has done it.  She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these many years, that he was her beloved son George.  She has never believed any ill of him, never.  If she had died without this happiness—­and she is an old woman now and can’t look to live very long—­she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had her senses, as her beloved son George.

“Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me too.  When I left home I didn’t care much, mother—­I am afraid not a great deal—­for leaving; and went away and ’listed, harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not I, and that nobody cared for me.”

The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.