“He must know something of it,” said she.  “Does he feel it much?”

“Very much,” said Mr. Benson.  Jemima shook her head sadly.

“It is hard upon him,” said she.

“It is,” Mr. Benson replied.

For in truth, Leonard was their greatest anxiety indoors.  His health seemed shaken, he spoke half sentences in his sleep, which showed that in his dreams he was battling on his mother’s behalf against an unkind and angry world.  And then he would wail to himself, and utter sad words of shame, which they never thought had reached his ears.  By day, he was in general grave and quiet; but his appetite varied, and he was evidently afraid of going into the streets, dreading to be pointed at as an object of remark.  Each separately in their hearts longed to give him change of scene; but they were all silent, for where was the requisite money to come from?

His temper became fitful and variable.  At times he would be most sullen against his mother; and then give way to a passionate remorse.  When Mr. Benson caught Ruth’s look of agony at her child’s rebuffs, his patience failed; or rather, I should say, he believed that a stronger, severer hand than hers was required for the management of the lad.  But, when she heard Mr. Benson say so, she pleaded with him.

“Have patience with Leonard,” she said.  “I have deserved the anger that is fretting in his heart.  It is only I who can reinstate myself in his love and respect.  I have no fear.  When he sees me really striving hard and long to do what is right, he must love me.  I am not afraid.”

Even while she spoke, her lips quivered, and her colour went and came with eager anxiety.  So Mr. Benson held his peace, and let her take her course.  It was beautiful to see the intuition by which she divined what was passing in every fold of her child’s heart, so as to be always ready with the right words to soothe or to strengthen him.  Her watchfulness was unwearied, and with no thought of self-tainting in it, or else she might have often paused to turn aside and weep at the clouds of shame which came over Leonard’s love for her, and hid it from all but her faithful heart; she believed and knew that he was yet her own affectionate boy, although he might be gloomily silent, or apparently hard and cold.  And in all this, Mr. Benson could not choose but admire the way in which she was insensibly teaching Leonard to conform to the law of right, to recognise duty in the mode in which every action was performed.  When Mr. Benson saw this, he knew that all goodness would follow, and that the claims which his mother’s infinite love had on the boy’s heart would be acknowledged at last, and all the more fully because she herself never urged them, but silently admitted the force of the reason that caused them to be for a time forgotten.  By and-by Leonard’s remorse at his ungracious and sullen ways to his mother—­ways that alternated with passionate, fitful bursts of clinging love—­assumed more the character of repentance, he tried to do so no more.  But still his health was delicate; he was averse to going out-of-doors; he was much graver and sadder than became his age.  It was what must be an inevitable consequence of what had been; and Ruth had to be patient, and pray in secret, and with many tears, for the strength she needed.