‘And proved it, too!’ cries a voice from the door, the voice of one who was prouder of her even than I; it is true, and yet almost unbelievable, that any one could have been prouder of her than I.
‘But those days are gone,’ my mother says solemnly, ‘gone to come back no more. You’ll put by your work now, man, and have your supper, and then you’ll come up and sit beside your mother for a whiley, for soon you’ll be putting her away in the kirk-yard.’
I hear such a little cry from near the door.
So my mother and I go up the stair together. ‘We have changed places,’ she says; ‘that was just how I used to help you up, but I’m the bairn now.’
She brings out the Testament again; it was always lying within reach; it is the lock of hair she left me when she died. And when she has read for a long time she ‘gives me a look,’ as we say in the north, and I go out, to leave her alone with God. She had been but a child when her mother died, and so she fell early into the way of saying her prayers with no earthly listener. Often and often I have found her on her knees, but I always went softly away, closing the door. I never heard her pray, but I know very well how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, there was not a day in God’s sight between the worn woman and the little child.
CHAPTER VI—HER MAID OF ALL WORK
And sometimes I was her maid of all work.
It is early morn, and my mother has come noiselessly into my room. I know it is she, though my eyes are shut, and I am only half awake. Perhaps I was dreaming of her, for I accept her presence without surprise, as if in the awakening I had but seen her go out at one door to come in at another. But she is speaking to herself.
‘I’m sweer to waken him—I doubt he was working late—oh, that weary writing—no, I maunna waken him.’
I start up. She is wringing her hands. ‘What is wrong?’ I cry, but I know before she answers. My sister is down with one of the headaches against which even she cannot fight, and my mother, who bears physical pain as if it were a comrade, is most woebegone when her daughter is the sufferer. ‘And she winna let me go down the stair to make a cup of tea for her,’ she groans.