‘I don’t know,’ I answered, sadly. ‘I never saw her, that I remember.’
‘Haven’t you got a likeness of her at home?’ he demanded with surprise. ‘Wait till I show you mine.’
He fumbled about in his waistcoat, and produced a much faded daguerreotype of an ordinary-looking young woman in old-fashioned habiliments.
‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ he exclaimed, with weak enthusiasm as he pressed the miniature to his lips.
‘Oh, how I wish she hadn’t died! I know I should have loved her so much!’
I made no reply. Poor Jemmy’s imagination did not run so fast as mine. If my mother had lived to side with my father, where should I have been between them? I turned my face away, and sighed.
It was strange that I had no idea of what my mother had been like. I had never even formed one, neither had I any relation to whose memory I might have appealed on the subject. My father lived a solitary, aimless life in the old neglected house I have alluded to, seldom leaving his own apartments, except at meal times, and certainly never asking any friend to enter them to bear him company. The servants had their parents, or lovers, or brothers, to visit them by stealth in the kitchen, but the master sat by himself, gloomy and pre-occupied, and irritable almost to frenzy when provoked. No wonder I wished that I could have spent the Easter holidays with Mrs Murray. But a great surprise was in store for me. The boys had hardly concluded the game of football they had been carrying on during my colloquy with Jemmy, when Mrs Murray came smiling down the playground in search of me.
‘I’ve a piece of news for you, Master Vere,’ she exclaimed. ‘Some one is waiting to see you in the parlour.’
‘Not papa!’ I said, quickly.
‘No; not your papa,’ replied Mrs Murray, laying her hand compassionately on my shoulder, ‘but a new friend—a lady whom you will like very much indeed.’