She cut me a great piece of bread, and then a great piece of butter, and I lost no time in discovering that the quality was worthy of the quantity. Mrs Wilson kept a grave silence for a good while. At last, as she was pouring out the second cup, she looked at me over the teapot, and said—
‘You don’t remember your mother, I suppose, Master Cumbermede?’
‘No, ma’am. I never saw my mother.’
‘Within your recollection, you mean. But you must have seen her, for you were two years old when she died.’
‘Did you know my mother, then, ma’am?’ I asked, but without any great surprise, for the events of the day had been so much out of the ordinary that I had for the time almost lost the faculty of wonder.
She compressed her thin lips, and a perpendicular wrinkle appeared in the middle of her forehead, as she answered—
‘Yes; I knew your mother.’
‘She was very good, wasn’t she, ma’am?’ I said, with my mouth full of bread and butter.
‘Yes. Who told you that?’
‘I was sure of it. Nobody ever told me.’