“Leave you? Go out of the house into which I came when Master Alex was a baby, bless him! and when you were but a tiny, tiny tot! Leave the house? No, it ain’t me as ’ull do that.”
“Then, Hannah, what will you do?”
I went up to her and took one of her hands. She gave it unwillingly.
“Dumps,” she said. She was still huddled by the fire. I had never seen her so subdued or broken-down before, and it was only when I heard her voice rise in shrill passion that I recognised the old Hannah. “Dumps, is it you who is going to submit tame—you, who had a mother?”
“Oh, I must submit,” I said. I sank down again into a chair. “Where’s the good?” I queried.
“I always know you had no spirit worth speaking of,” said Hannah. “I’m sorry now as I gave you that drop of soup. It was the stock in which I meant to boil the bits of mutton for the boys’ dinner, but I said you should have it, for you were so took aback, poor child! But there! ’tain’t in you, I expect, to feel things very deep; and yet you had a mother.”
“You said yesterday that she had been killed,” I said, and my voice trembled.
“And so she were. If ever a woman were pushed out of life—pushed on to the edge of the world and then right over it—it was the Professor’s wife, Alice Grant. Ah! she was too gentle, too sweet; he wanted a different sort.”
When Hannah said these words, in a flash I seemed to see Grace Donnithorne in a new position—Grace Donnithorne with her laughing eyes, her firm mouth, her composed and dignified manner. It would be very difficult, I felt certain, to push Grace Donnithorne over the edge of the world. I rose.
“Hannah, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell the boys. But please understand that I am very unhappy. I don’t love my mother one bit the less; I am about as unhappy as girl can be. I have been cruelly deceived. I went to see Miss Donnithorne, and she was kind to me, and I thought her kindness meant something.”