Mrs. Stuart began to sob.
"It isn't my way to give in," she said. "I'm not one o' those folks that's for ever chopping and changing. When I says a thing, I mean it, and I keep to it. And I did say I'd never have you marry Nancy Dunn. I didn't think her good enough. Nor I don't. Leastways, her father isn't your father's equal."
"Oh, bother!" broke out Archie.
"Yes, it's easy to say 'bother!'" she retorted, rather disposed to flare up. She had been somewhat irritable all day—no unusual state of things in the earlier stages of trouble, or of any marked change in heart and life. "But if you'd have a bit of patience and hear me out, you'd maybe speak in a different sort of way."
"Yes, mother," Archie said meekly, a sudden hope springing up.
"I did say I wouldn't have it," repeated Mrs. Stuart; "and I meant it too, and I'd have kept to my word. But he—he came in to see me, just the very same day he died—he did, Archie, that very afternoon. And I made him a cup o' tea, and he said—he said—I was the best tea-maker—"
"Yes, yes, mother, I know," said Archie, as she broke out crying. "You told me all that."
"And if I did," she retorted, "there was something else I didn't tell you nor nobody, and didn't mean to neither, till I'd made up my mind what to do. And I couldn't make it up till yesterday, when I was standing in the crowd, and all of 'em in black, and everybody crying round me, and Nancy Dunn with her pretty face all blistered—for there's no denying she's got a pretty face."
"Yes," assented Archie, with much warmth.
"It gave me a sort of a fellow-feeling with her, and I won't deny it," said Mrs. Stuart. "And it sort of made me think of his talking to me like that, about you and she, and how he hoped she'd be a good wife to you one day."