‘I had rather he had hearkened to you, my boy,’ said Mrs. King.
‘I don’t know why he should do that,’ said Paul, perhaps meaning that a boy who heeded not such a mother would certainly heed no one else. ‘But please, Missus,’ he added, ‘don’t beat him, for you made me tell on him.’
‘Beat him! no,’ said Mrs. King, with a sad smile; ‘he’s too big a boy for me to manage that way. I can’t do more than grieve if he lets himself be led away.’
‘Then I’d like to beat him myself if he grieves you!’ burst out Paul, doubling up his brown fist with indignation.
‘But you won’t,’ said Mrs. King gently; ‘I don’t want to make a quarrel among you, and I hope you’ll help to keep him out of bad ways, Paul. I look to you for it. Good-night.’
Perhaps the darkness and her own warm feeling made her forget the condition of that hand; at any rate, as she said Good-night she took it in her own and shook it heartily, and then she went in.
Paul did not say Good-night in answer; but when she had turned away, his head went down between his two crossed arms upon the top of the gate, and he did not move for many many minutes, except that his shoulders shook and shook again, for he was sobbing as he had never sobbed since Granny Moll died. If home and home love were not matters of course to you, you might guess what strange new fountains of feeling were stirred in the wild but not untaught boy, by that face, that voice, that touch.
And Mrs. King, as she walked to her own door in the twilight, with bitter pain in her heart, could not help thinking of those from the highways and hedges who flocked to the feast set at naught by such as were bidden.
A sad and mournful Sunday evening was that to the mother and daughter, as each sat over her Bible. Mrs. King would not talk to Ellen, for fear of awakening Alfred; not that low voices would have done so, but Ellen was already much upset by what she had heard and seen, and to talk it over would have brought on a fit of violent crying; so her mother thought it safest to say nothing. They would have read their Bible to one another, but each had her voice so choked with tears, that it would not do.
That Alfred was sinking away into the grave, was no news to Mrs. King; but perhaps it had never been so plainly spoken to her before, and his own knowledge of it seemed to make it more sure; but broken-hearted as she felt, she had been learning to submit to this, and it might be better and safer for him, she thought, to be aware of his state, and more ready to do his best with the time left to him. That was not the freshest sorrow, or more truly a darker cloud had come over, namely, the feeling, so terrible to a good careful mother, that her son is breaking out of the courses to which she has endeavoured and prayed to bring him up—that he is casting off restraint, and running into evil that may be the beginning of ruin, and with no father’s hand to hold him in.