No hailing of him as little master or as anything else took place when he reached home; Katie was busy at the washhouse, and he met no one amidst all the dreary litter of last night’s festivities till he came on his mother in the back kitchen.  The piled dresser showed a muddle of unwashed dishes, and the floor was gritty with mud.  Annie looked, and was, dirty with exertion; and even the steam that wreathed upwards from the washbowl added a sense of uncleanness to the air.  Ishmael was too young to be depressed by dirt, which he rather liked, but the greyness of it all settled on him like a blight.

He had been right about one thing—­there was a distinct change in Annie’s manner.  It was not, however, any difference such as he had imagined; it went deeper than mere speech.  As he entered his mother came over to him, and, tilting up his chin, searched his eyes with hers till he felt uncomfortable.  He jerked his head away, retreating against the door which had swung to behind him.

“Eh,” said Annie, and he knew it was not to him she spoke; “it is to be.  The Lard will accept him as He accepted the infant Samuel.”

Ishmael began to be afraid; his mother’s eyes had the glitter in them that usually went with one of her storming fits, but now she was quiet, though tense.  “What is it, mother?” he asked nervously, staring at her in his turn.

“You’m a brand to be plucked from the burning,” she told him, “an’ by the grace of God mine’s to be the hand that’ll pluck ’ee.  You’ll be saved along of your poor old mawther, won’t ’ee, dearie?”

Then, as Ishmael showed no disposition to do anything but try and get away, she caught up a slab of heavy-cake which lay on the dresser.  “Thee mustn’t be afeared of thy mawther, my worm,” she murmured, her voice more coaxing than he had ever heard it; “we’re gwain before the Lard hand in hand....  There, take this bit o’ food into the yard, but don’t ’ee go far.  Do ’ee hear what I say, Ishmael?”

He hastened with a submissive “Yes” and then fled, cake in hand.  Out in the yard his little mind struggled in vain with the problem of this change, for there was no added respect in his mother’s treatment of him, such as his stepping openly into the position of owner of Cloom might have made.  Neither, his child’s true instinct told him, was it affection suddenly awakened in her.  He cast about vainly for what it might mean.  Presently he went into the washhouse, where Katie and another woman were busy; they took scant notice of him, but went on discussing the fact that Archelaus had not been home to bed all night, had not long come in, and gone upstairs, where he still was, snoring for all to hear.  Ishmael was not altogether ignorant, and allusions were bandied back and forth across his head which he was at once too young and too old to hear unscathed.

Left alone, Annie went upstairs, listened a moment outside the door of her eldest-born, then went on to the tiny room over the porch that was Ishmael’s.  And there, on her knees by the bed, she prayed silently, her eyes rolling till a slather of white showed beneath each faded iris, her reddened fingers wringing each other so that patches of pallor sprang out on them.