Mrs. Jarvis’s heart overflowed with motherly gratitude, for she idolized her boy; but she was not ‘scholard’ enough to let it trickle from her heart down her arm into a pen and or to paper; and so from time to time she got the leading man (who had seen better days, and taught virtue in a national school before he took to delineating villainy on the boards) to write in reply to Shakspeare, and in every letter there was always a mother’s blessing for Mrs. Smith, the kind lodger.
Thus far had events progressed, and thus they stood on the day when this chapter opens, and we see Mrs. Smith at her work, and Shakspeare, who is still weak from his long illness, lying on the sofa.
Mrs. Smith bends over her work and stitches away; and after Shakspeare has read his mother’s letter aloud, and then read it to himself, there is a short silence.
Shakspeare folds the letter and puts it away carefully again.
‘You like reading letters over again and again, don’t you?’ he says presently.
Mrs. Smith starts.
‘Why, what do you mean?’ she says hesitatingly.
‘When I was ill and you thought I was asleep, I often used to see you take letters from your pocket and read them again and again. Were they from your husband, who is abroad?’
The question was put in innocent boyish curiosity, but Mrs. Smith flushed scarlet and turned her head away so that the lad might not notice her confusion.
‘Yes,’ she answered, after a pause; ‘they were from my husband.’