I shut up the case hastily.
“You are in rare luck to have it,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered; “it is a great comfort to me. This is mother; this is the woman I love; no other can ever take her place.”
“Of course not,” said Alex. “And some day when I’m rich you’ll let me have it photographed, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will. We’ll stick to our bargain, won’t we, Alex?”
Alex rose to his feet. He yawned slightly.
“I’m dead-tired, and I must go to school to-morrow. I haven’t looked at one of my lessons, but it doesn’t really matter. When the Professor is away marrying, you know, he can’t expect his children to work as hard as they do when he is at home.”
“Oh Alex, Hannah said something dreadful!”
“As though anybody minded what she said!”
“She said that mother—our little, young, pretty mother—was killed. She said mother would have been in the world now if she hadn’t been killed.”