“Hear this, you wummon as talks of a broken heart,” answered the elder almost harshly.  “Wait—­wait till you ’m the mother of a li’l man-cheel, an’ see the shining eyes of un a-lookin’ into yourn while your nipple’s bein’ squeezed by his naked gums, an’ you laugh at what you suffered for un, an’ hug un to you.  Wait till he’m grawed from baby to bwoy, from bwoy to man; wait till he’m all you’ve got left in the cold, starved winter of a sorrowful life; an’ wait till he’m brought home to ’e like this here, while you’ve been sittin’ laughin’ to yourself an’ countin’ dream gawld.  Then turn about to find the tears that’ll comfort ‘e, an’ the prayers that’ll soothe ’e, and the God that’ll lift ’e up; but you won’t find ’em, Chris Blanchard.”

The girl listened to this utterance, and it filled her with a sort of weird wonder as at a revelation of heredity.  Mrs. Hicks had ever been taciturn before her, and now this rapid outpouring of thoughts and phrases echoed like the very speech of the dead.  Thus had Clement talked, and the girl dimly marvelled without understanding.  The impression passed, and there awoke in Chris a sudden determination to whisper to this bereaved woman what she could not even tell her own mother.  A second thought had probably changed her intention, but she did not wait for any second thought.  She acted on impulse, rose, put her arms round the widow, and murmured her secret.  The other started violently and broke her motionless posture before this intelligence.

“Christ!  And he knawed—­my son?”

“He knawed.”

“Then you needn’t whisper it.  There’s awnly us three here.”

“An’ no others must knaw.  You’ll never tell—­never?  You swear that?”

“Me tell!  No, no.  To think!  Then theer’s real sorrow for you, tu, poor soul—­real, grawin’ sorrow tu.  Differ’nt from mine, but real enough.  Yet—­”

She relapsed into a stone-like repose.  No facial muscle moved, but the expression of her mind appeared in her eyes and there gradually grew a hungry look in them—­as of a starving thing confronted with food.  The realisation of these new facts took a long time.  No action accompanied it; no wrinkle deepened; no line of the dejected figure lifted; but when she spoke again her voice had greatly changed and become softer and very tremulous.

“O my dear God! ’t will be a bit of Clement!  Had ‘e thought o’ that?”

Then she rose suddenly to her feet and expression came to her face—­a very wonderful expression wherein were blended fear, awe, and something of vague but violent joy—­as though one suddenly beheld a loved ghost from the dead.

“’T is as if all of un weern’t quite lost!  A li’l left—­a cheel of his!  Wummon!  You’m a holy thing to me—­a holy thing evermore!  You’m bearin’ sunshine for your summertime and my winter—­if God so wills!”

Then she lifted up her voice and cried to Chris with a strange cry, and knelt down at her feet and kissed her hands and stroked them.