“This I said ’cause the old ancient’s lips shook, an’ her bright eyes fell a-blinking, an’ great tears rolled down. Then she put her hands over her face an’ bowed over ’em.
“‘My God!’ said the chap, half to hisself, ‘this is the first time my mother have wept to my sight; an’ I am sixty years old!’
“But of course a Devonshire woman wouldn’t cry afore a Frenchman, even if he was her son.
“Come presently she cheered up. ‘Do ’e knaw a place by the name of Postbridge, my boy?’ she says.
“‘I did ought to, ma’am,’ I sez; ‘’twas from Hartland Farm I runned.’
“She sighed a gert sigh. ‘Hartland!’ she says, as if the word was a whole hymn tune to her.
“‘There’s a church, an’ a public, there now,’ I said.
“‘An’ the gert men of renown? Parson Mason, an’ Mr. Slack, an’ Judge Buller, an’ Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt?’ she axed me.
“‘Never heard tell of none of them,’ I said.
“‘Course not,’ old lady answers. ‘Why—why, I forgot I be ninety-four. They heroes was all dead afore your faither an’ mother were born.’