"Why, bless your dear heart!" said Mitty; "and who gave me my silver teapot, I should like to know, and the ivory workbox, and that very kettle a-staring you in the face, and the Wedgwood tea-things, and—and everything, if it was not you?"
John did not answer. His face twitched.
The bars of the fender were blurred. The brass kettle, instead of staring him in the face, melted quite away.
Mitty stroked his head and face.
"Cryin'!" she said—"my lamby cryin'!"
"Not for myself, Mitty."
"Who for, then? For that Miss Dinah?"
"No, Mitty, for you. This is no home for you and me." He took her hard hand and rubbed his cheek against it. "It belongs to Colonel Tempest. I am not my father's son, Mitty."
"Well, my precious," said Mitty, soothingly, in no wise discomposed by what John feared would have quite overwhelmed her, "and if your poor mammy did say as much to me when she was light-headed, when her pains was on her, there's no call to fret about that, seeing it's a long time ago, and her dead and all. Poor thing! I can see her now, with her pretty eyes and her little hands, and she'd put her head against me and say, 'Nursey' (Nursey I was to her), 'I'm not fit neither to live nor to die.' Many and many's the night I've roared to think of her after she was gone, when you was asleep in your crib. But there's no need for you to fret, my deary."
John's heart contracted. Mitty knew also. Oh, if he might but have started life knowing what even Mitty knew!