‘We’ve been parted long enough, it strikes me,’ she continued; ‘and now your father’s gone, and left no one behind him but yourself, I suppose you’ll be looking out for my share of the property at my death, so we may as well let bye-gones be bye-gones—eh?’
‘I wish for none of your property, madam,’ I answered haughtily, ‘since the law gives it to you you are welcome to keep it.’
‘Charlie, dear, think what you may be resigning,’ urged my mother in my ear.
‘I think of nothing but you, mother!’
‘Hoity, toity! here’s manners,’ cried the other woman. ‘You seem to forget, Master Charlie, that I’m your mother!’
Still holding my mother’s hand, I turned and confronted her.
‘I forget nothing, madam! I wish I could; but I remember that here stands the woman who laboured where you refused to work; who loved, where you had insulted and betrayed; who was faithful where you were faithless and undeserving; and, I say, that here stands my dead father’s true wife; and here stands, in God’s sight, my mother! The blessing of man may not have sanctified her union, but the blessing of heaven shall be upon it and upon her—upon the creatures she rescued from a living death and upon the gracious hand with which she did it, until time itself shall be no more.’
So saying, I passed with my mother beyond the gates of Lilyfields, to make a new life for her in some quiet spot where she might outlive her grief, and to repay, if possible, by the protection and support of my manhood, the love she had given me as a little child.
THE END.