And after that the congregation dispersed to their homes.
But though Johnnie Collins was not a bad sort, though he often begged his mother in a vague sort of way to come up to London and see him, and showed nothing but disappointment when she persistently refused, something always happened at the last moment to prevent him from coming down to see her.
He often wrote to her and often, too, sent her little sums of money, which the post-mistress declared she always cashed with a very sour face; and once his letter said that he intended to come and bring his little son to see grandmother. But “business” as usual intervened, and the little lad was sent down at last with a maidservant—the fresh air being considered beneficial for him after some childish ailment. Then it was that the old tree might have been said, as it were, to bloom afresh. All the tenderness that out of a Spartan pursuit of a distinct and difficult object had been withheld from her own boy’s childhood was lavished upon this little flower of her strange ambition.
Mrs. Cave and Mrs. Neave and Mr. Barfield all had tales to tell of this secret but undoubted transformation. The fair-haired babe and his stern grandmother were seen wandering along the lanes hand in hand as the twilight fell upon the day’s work, or when the August moon rose at the sun-setting—gold upon the golden harvest land. He was seen teazing her at the wash-tub, she patiently submitting, and she was even known beyond a doubt to have caught him in her arms in the open churchyard where the whole village might have seen her, and to have kissed him there to her heart’s content.
And even when that glad three weeks was over, and the boy went back to his parents, there were those who declared that the light never faded again from the old woman’s eyes till she was laid in the grave not two months afterwards.
Some one found her dead one day beside her own lonely fireside. In her hand was a letter from her son; it contained a £5 note, and said he wished it could have been more, but that they had an establishment to keep up now and their expenses were heavy.
Mrs. Neave was shocked, but Mrs. Cave declared that Johnnie had fulfilled all that his mother required of him, and that if she could but have known that he walked behind her coffin in a well-brushed suit of black broad-cloth, it would have added the last touch to her perfect satisfaction.
Be that as it may, and though the neighbours pitied her, there was a peaceful and a triumphant smile on the dead, old face.
A WOMAN’S WAGER
A WOMAN’S WAGER