She fell upon his neck, and kissed him through her tears.

‘Mother!’ said he, holding her gently in his arms, ’who has sent me my lot in life, both of good and of evil?’

She shook her head.  She would have nothing to do with religion just then.

‘Mother,’ he went on, seeing that she would not speak, ’I, too, have been rebellious; but I am striving to be so no longer.  Help me, as you helped me when I was a child.  Then you said many good words—­when my father died, and we were sometimes sorely short of comforts—­which we shall never be now; you said brave, noble, trustful words then, mother, which I have never forgotten, though they may have lain dormant.  Speak to me again in the old way, mother.  Do not let us have to think that the world has too much hardened our hearts.  If you would say the old good words, it would make me feel something of the pious simplicity of my childhood.  I say them to myself, but they would come differently from you, remembering all the cares and trials you have had to bear.’

‘I have had a many,’ said she, sobbing, ’but none so sore as this.  To see you cast down from your rightful place!  I could say it for myself, John, but not for you.  Not for you!  God has seen fit to be very hard on you, very.’

She shook with the sobs that come so convulsively when an old person weeps.  The silence around her struck her at last; and she quieted herself to listen.  No sound.  She looked.  Her son sate by the table, his arms thrown half across it, his head bent face downwards.

‘Oh, John!’ she said, and she lifted his face up.  Such a strange, pallid look of gloom was on it, that for a moment it struck her that this look was the forerunner of death; but, as the rigidity melted out of the countenance and the natural colour returned, and she saw that he was himself once again, all worldly mortification sank to nothing before the consciousness of the great blessing that he himself by his simple existence was to her.  She thanked God for this, and this alone, with a fervour that swept away all rebellious feelings from her mind.

He did not speak readily; but he went and opened the shutters, and let the ruddy light of dawn flood the room.  But the wind was in the east; the weather was piercing cold, as it had been for weeks; there would be no demand for light summer goods this year.  That hope for the revival of trade must utterly be given up.

It was a great comfort to have had this conversation with his mother; and to feel sure that, however they might henceforward keep silence on all these anxieties, they yet understood each other’s feelings, and were, if not in harmony, at least not in discord with each other, in their way of viewing them.  Fanny’s husband was vexed at Thornton’s refusal to take any share in the speculation which he had offered to him, and withdrew from any possibility of being supposed able to assist him with the ready money, which indeed the speculator needed for his own venture.