'No, my dear, I know nothing at all about it.'
'But you'll have to tell the people when they come to see it,' I said anxiously. 'Mother always did.'
'I can't, my dear. I know nothing of the place.'
'But you'll learn, won't you? I will teach you.'
'My dear, I am a great deal too old to learn.'
She looked quite frightened and confused. I shook my head and said no more. I did not see how she was to get on at all, and I thought how very different people's mothers could be from one another.
Years afterwards I understood good old Granny better. When she was very old and feeble she used to tell me—Granny was always fond of talking—about the little home she had left to come and keep house for her son in his time of trouble.
'It was a nice clean little place, Willie,' she would say, twirling her thumbs and looking round her with eyes that had grown very dim, 'clean and very cheerful—just half way down the street, my dear, where you could see everything that was going on. It was a tidy street; we all kept our doorsteps so clean, you could have eaten your dinner off them. We took a pride in it, you see, Willie. We were very sociable and friendly among ourselves. I could always pop on my pattens and run in next door, or next door but one, may be, for a word of chat and a dish of tea. I had lived there a long time, and we were very comfortable, you see, Willie. It seemed a bit lonesome just at first, when Stephen brought me here. But it's all for the best, my dear, all for the best, for sure.'
I could understand then, what I used to wonder at as a child. It must have been a change from the busy county town, with its orderly trimness and sociable ways, to the wild silent ruins on the hill-side. But she had come away willingly from her cosy home, at her son's bidding, and I am sure she died without ever thinking that the sacrifice so simply made was anything good in her.
By degrees I got used to seeing the bent figure trotting about, where my mother used to move; doing her work—not filling her place—keeping the house beautifully clean and tidy, but for the rest—ah, it would always seem empty and blank. There would always be the sense of something wanting.