"I can't say that I do," said John, wondering whether the scout had lost his senses. "I know you have a mother—that is, I heard as much from your wife while I was staying at Jericho. But I never had the pleasure of seeing her, except, to be sure, her back once," added John, with a strict regard to veracity.
"That's very true, sir. You see she doesn't like to be stared at, mother doesn't; that's why, Mr. Tincroft."
"Was she afraid that your lodger would stare at her?" asked John, without much apparent curiosity.
"Well, partly, sir; otherwise, she is afraid of being stared at when she goes out, which she never does if she can help it, letting alone the getting up and down stairs."
"Ah! How so?" asked John, crossing his legs, and biting the feather end of his pen.
"The truth is, she is so uncommon stout, and she doesn't like it to be seen or known. It isn't her fault, sir; she starves herself to keep it down: that's what mother does. But the more she starves, the fatter she gets, poor thing," said Barry, pathetically.
"Oh," said John, "then I think I should leave off starving myself if I were in her place."
"That's what I tell her, but what's the use? None at all," remarked the affectionate son, in a tone of pathetic remonstrance. "But that's neither here nor there," added he, reverting to his primary topic. "Mother's uncommon sorry she didn't know about who it was had our rooms till you was gone, not till a week ago: and ever since she has been going on in a way, sir; ever since she knowed you was a Tincroft."
"And why—why?" asked John, with a new interest awakened. "I mean, what reason has she to care about my being a Tincroft?"
"Well," said Scout, "that's what I wanted to know of mother."