Poor Mrs. Ginniss longed to be contradicted or instructed or laughed at once more, and fought against her son's submissive respect as another mother might have done against disobedience or insolence.
"Can't ye be mad nor yet be merry at nothin', Teddy?" asked she impatiently one day.
"I'm thinking I'll never be merry again, mother," said Teddy sadly, as he left the room.
It was in the afternoon of the same day, that Mrs. Ginniss, sitting at her sewing in melancholy mood enough, heard a little tap at her door, and, opening it, found upon the threshold a lady, elegant in her simple dress of gray, who asked,—
"Are you Mrs. Ginniss?"
"Yes, ma'am; I'm that same," said the laundress, staring strangely at the lovely face framed in a shower of feathery golden ringlets, and lighted by large violet eyes as sad as they were sweet.
"Will ye be plazed to walk in, ma'am?" continued she. "It's but a poor place for the likes uv yees."
The lady made no reply, but, gliding into the room, stood for a moment looking about it, and then turning to the Irish woman, who still regarded her in the same awestruck manner, said piteously,—
"I am her mother!"
"Sure an' I knowed it the minute I sot eyes on ye; for it's the same swate face, an' eyes that's worse nor cryin, ye've got; an' the same way of a born lady, so quite an' so grand. Och! it wor a purty darlint, it wor; an' it's me own heart that's sore for her the day, forbye your'n that's her borned mother; and, if it wor my own life that 'ud fetch her back to yees"—