John came and sat down on the floor beside her, and leaned his head against her.
"Never mind the socks just now. There is something I want to talk to you about."
He looked at the fire through the bars of the high nursery fender, and something in its glimmer, seen from so near the floor through the remembered pattern of the wires which he had lost sight of for twenty years, suddenly recalled the times when he had sat on the hearthrug, as he was sitting now, with his head against Mitty's knee, confiding to her what he would do when he was a man.
"Do you remember, Mitty," he said, "how I used to tell you that when I grew up you should ride in a carriage, and have a gold brooch, and a clock that played a tune?"
"I remember, my darling; and how, next time Charles went into York, you give him all you had, and half a crown it was, to buy me a brooch, and the silly staring fool went and spent it, and brought back that great thing with the mock stones in. And you was as pleased as pleased. Eh! I was angry with Charles for taking your bits of money, and all he said was, 'Well, Mrs. Emson, I went to a many shops, and I give five shillin's for it so as to get a big un.'"
"I remember it," said John. "It was about the size of a small poultice. And so Charles paid half. Good old Charles! I seem to have been much deceived in my youth."
His deep-set eyes watched the fire, watched the semblance of a little castle in the heart of the glow. Mitty was quite happy with her darling's head against her knee.
"When the castle falls in I will tell her," said John to himself.
But the fire had settled itself. The castle held. At last Mitty put out her hand, and gave it a poke; not with the brass poker, of course, but with a little black slave which did that polished aristocrat's work for it.
"Mitty," said John, "I am not so rich now as when I was in pinafores; and even then, you see, the brooch was not bought with my own money. Charles gave half. I have never given you anything that was paid for with my own money. I have been spending other people's all my life."