Jack looked up; his mother’s voice was trembling.
“Ah, my dear,” she went on, “in the Father’s house are many mansions, and it is likely there are many mansions of His on earth. And if the windows of some look out on to beautiful things and others on to austere surroundings, suffering perhaps, and sin, those in the different chambers must not judge each other. That is what I wanted to say to you. But I have to go on in my own way. We can only do what we think right. There, that is all. But tell me, what do you intend to do about this baby?”
“I shall have it to live with me, I think,” said Jack; “that is, unless something else turns up. Mother, you don’t know how you have touched me, and how glad you have made me that you have spoken, and how ashamed.”
“No, Jack, not ashamed,” she said. “But I had to talk to you about it. I have thought of nothing else since I saw you yesterday. You go back to-morrow, do you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then say good-bye to your father before you go. I must leave you; I have an evening class. Good-bye, my dear.”
She kissed him with a tenderness that was new to her, and left him.
But it is not in the nature of those who have lived in a groove lightly to get out of it. Habit becomes nature, and to look permanently at one view would, no doubt, if continued for forty years, tend to make the observer believe that the world contained no other.
This was the case with Mrs. Collingwood. Her humanized interview with Jack had jolted her as a stone on the line may jolt a train for a moment without causing it to leave the metals. The direction in which it had been running, its speed, and its weight have all to be overcome, and with her long-continued convictions had given her great momentum, and an address she delivered three days afterward at a Mothers’ Union showed no speck of apostasy.