“So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had ’listed under another name, and I went abroad.  Abroad, at one time I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I didn’t think much about it.  So on, from year to year, through a service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself why should I ever write.”

“I don’t find any fault, child—­but not to ease my mind, George?  Not a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?”

This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.

“Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small consolation then in hearing anything about me.  There were you, respected and esteemed.  There was my brother, as I read in chance North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and famous.  There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like him, but self-unmade—­all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for most things that I could think of.  What business had I to make myself known?  After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of it?  The worst was past with you, mother.  I knew by that time (being a man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me; and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your mind as it was.”

The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.

“No, I don’t say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be so.  I said just now, what good could come of it?  Well, my dear mother, some good might have come of it to myself—­and there was the meanness of it.  You would have sought me out; you would have purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold; you would have brought me and my brother and my brother’s family together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something for me and set me up as a respectable civilian.  But how could any of you feel sure of me when I couldn’t so much as feel sure of myself?  How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to himself, excepting under discipline?  How could I look my brother’s children in the face and pretend to set them an example—­I, the vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and unhappiness of my mother’s life?  ‘No, George.’  Such were my words, mother, when I passed this in review before me:  ’You have made your bed.  Now, lie upon it.’”

Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, “I told you so!” The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.