Mrs. Gray's face became very serious, and her brown eyes shone with gentle lustre.
"It's my privilege to be a humble member of the Baptist church; but unless you have a conscience against immersion, I don't know as that ought to stand in the poor boy's way, especially as he may have been baptized already."
"Then you are not a charitable woman by profession? You are willing to take my boy for his own good? What will you do with him if I say yes?"
"Why, pretty much as I did with nephew Robert; let him run in the garden, hunt eggs, drive the geese home when he knows the way himself; and do all sorts of chores that will keep him out of mischief, and in health; as he grows old enough I will send him to school, and teach him the Lord's prayer myself. In short, I shall do pretty much like other people; scold him when he is bad, kiss him when he is good; in the end make him just such a handsome, honest, noble chap as my Robert is—that nephew of mine. Everybody admits that he is the salt of the earth, and I brought him up myself, every inch of him!"
"And among the rest you will teach him to forget and despise his mother," said the woman, bending her wet eyes upon Mrs. Gray, with a look of passionate scrutiny.
"I never wilfully went against the Bible in my life. When the child learns to read, he will find it written there, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.'"
"Can I see him when I please?"
"Certainly—why not?"
"But I am a prisoner; I have been here more than once."
"You are his mother," was the soft answer.