‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘how I have wanted to see you.’ Her smile was beaming warm with kindness. It was not love, but it was the nearest thing to it, and it warmed the chilled and famished youth.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you were coming to me of yourself, John.’
‘I was on my way,’ he said.
‘That’s right! I thought you would not desert your old friends. I told Elly to look out for you, and, if you were not coming, to bring you. Now tell me, my dear boy, do you go or stay?’
‘We are going to-morrow, Mrs. Egerton.’
‘To-morrow? So soon as that? And you say we——’
‘With my mother, Mrs. Egerton.’
He grew a little pale, and so, it seemed, did she.
‘Is that—that lady your mother, John?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and no more.