“Forty-three, sir; will be forty-four on the thirty-first of December. But I must look full sixty, my hair is so white, and my face so thin and wrinkly.”
“Well, you have good health, and you Yorkshire people are long-lived. You may live forty years longer yet—forty happy years with your son.”
“Oh, minister! what does your reverence mean? Have you heard anything? Have you got anything to tell me?” inquired the mother, startled by something in the curate’s tone or look, and speaking with repressed eagerness.
“Well, something has come. Have you anybody who would be likely to write a letter to you?”
“Nobody in the world, sir, except my boy, and I have never had a letter from him, as I told you.”
“Well, a letter has come for you. I did not give it at first, for fear it might startle you. I think it must be from your son.”
“Oh, give it to me, sir, please!—now, this moment!”
The curate handed the letter. The woman seized it, held it under the light of the lamp and devoured the superscription with ravenous eyes.
“Oh, yes! It is his writing! It is his own! Oh, thank the Lord! Oh, thank the Lord!” she cried, falling on her knees and sinking her head in the cushion of the chair. But she soon arose and drew her spectacles from her pocket and opened the letter and tried to read it; but the words ran together in dark lines before her disturbed vision, and she could not decipher them.
“Oh, sir, be so kind! Read it for me! Please do!”