“I wonder how you can find it in your heart to ask such a thing of her!”

“Lucy Lugur, poor little girl, has no mother.”

“You cannot expect Mrs. Stephen Hatton to mother her.”

“Yes, I do.  Mother has often told me she would do anything in the world for me.  I am going to ask her to go with me, then I can take Lucy.”

“Harry, you must not put her love in such a hard strait.  Do be reasonable.”

“I cannot be reasonable about Lucy Lugur.  I love her, John; she is the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“All right, I do not contradict you; but is that any reason for sacrificing mother’s comfort to her beauty?”

“Mother likes to give up to me.  If I ask her to go, she will go.  I do not forget, John, what you have promised; no indeed, and I am sure mother will be quite as kind.  I will now go and ask her.”

When he arrived at the Hall gate, he had a sudden sense of the injustice of his intention, but the thought of Lucy Lugur put it down; and he heralded his arrival by a long, sweet whistle, whose music penetrated the distance and informed Mrs. Hatton of her son’s approach.  She was drinking her afternoon cup of tea to angry thoughts of him, telling herself that he ought to have been home on the previous day, that at least he ought to have sent her a few lines when delayed.  So troubled was she by these reflections and others rising from them that she had forgotten to put sugar in her tea, and was eating wheat bread when her favorite thin slices of rye loaf were at her hand.  The prodigious inquietude of motherhood had her in its grip, and she had just begun to tell herself that poor Harry might be sick in an hotel with no one to look after him when her reverie of love and fear was dispelled in a moment by the cheerful sound of Harry’s whistle.

The next moment she was on the porch to welcome him.  If his delay was wrong, she had quite forgotten the wrong; there was nothing in her heart but mother love, running over and expressing itself in her beaming eyes, her smiling face, her outstretched hands, and her joyful words.  She kissed him fondly and between laughing and crying led him into the house and straight to her little tea-table.

“There is room enough for you, my dear, dear lad!  Where have you been this ever so long?” she asked.  “I was looking for you last Saturday night—­and John is home again, thank God, and——­”

“I know John is home, mother.  I was at the mill.  My horse met me at Oxbar Station, and as I was riding, I called at the mill to look at my mail, and so finding John there, I stopped and had a chat with him.”

“I am glad of that.  What did he say to thee?  He was feeling very bad, I know, about the Naylor boys.  I wonder what makes thee even thyself with that low set.  Thy father will be angry, if he knows, and Greenwood thinks he is sure to know if Naylors are meddling in his family or his affairs.  Greenwood speaks very badly of the whole crowd—­living and dead.”