He stretched out his hand and stroked her face, then said suddenly, "I wish I could run off down the lane with them."
"I wish you could, my precious," she answered tenderly; "but, Tom, God has willed it differently, and we must try and be willing. Do try, my dearest!"
"I can't," said Tom in a stifled voice. "It makes it worse to come here and half see it all. I would rather have stayed in London."
"I hope it will do you good, my dear; and you will find to-morrow that there are some pleasures you can share."
"I don't think there will be. Even baby could grab at the flowers at our nursery window the minute he came in; but I—, I could only be lifted as usual on to the sofa, and stick there."
A hot tear fell on little Tom's face.
"There now, I have made you cry," he said penitently. "Oh, mamma, I wish I could bear it better!"
He clasped his arms about her neck, and after a minute or two, she whispered his prayer, and then tenderly kissing him, she got up to go away.
Tom would like to have seen her face—the face he loved so much—but it was too dark; and he could only guess by her step that she was dejected and sorrowful. This made him very sorrowful too, and burning tears rolled down his cheeks when her footfall sounded on the last stair. Being left alone reminded him of that other boy who had no mother; that boy who had no white soft bed at the sea-side to rest in, but was probably at this moment in a dark, unhealthy room, looking at the shadow of the flickering gas-lamp on the dirty blind, in hot, dirty London.
"I wish I had not grieved her," he thought, as he had thought a hundred times before; "but I can't help it; I'm a miserable little boy, and always shall be, till the end!"