“I do not call that excitement,” he said: “a man that knows what excitement is has other ways of reckoning——”
“But still,” she said, with a little gasp accepting this repulse, “it would be something out of the common. And you will have been travelling all day. How far have you come to-day, my dear?”
“Don’t put me through my catechism all at once,” he said, with a hasty wrinkle of anger in his forehead. “I’ll tell you all that another time. I’m very tired, at least, whether I’ve come a short way or a long.”
“I have put your bed all ready for you—Robbie.” She seemed to say his name with a little reluctance: his bonnie name! which had cost her so keen a pang to think of as stained or soiled. Was it the same feeling that arrested it on her lips now?
“Am I bothering you, mother, staying here a little quiet with my pipe? for I’ll go, if that is what you want.”
She had coughed a little, much against her will, unaccustomed to the smoke. “Bothering me!” she cried: “is it likely that anything should bother me to-night, and my son come back?”
He looked at her, and for the first time seemed to remark her countenance strained with a wistful attempt at satisfaction, on the background of her despair.
“I am afraid,” he said, shaking his head, “there is not much more pleasure in it to you than to me.”
“There would be joy and blessing in it, Robbie,” she cried, forcing herself to utterance, “if it was a pleasure to you.”
“That’s past praying for,” he replied, almost roughly, and then turned to knock out his pipe upon the edge of the trim summer fireplace, all so daintily arranged for the warm season when fires were not wanted. Her eyes followed his movements painfully in spite of herself, seeing everything which she would have preferred not to see. And then he rose, putting the pipe still not extinguished in his pocket. “If it’s to be like this, mother,” he said, “the best thing for me will be to go to bed. I’m tired enough, heaven knows; but the pipe’s my best friend, and it was soothing me. Now I’ll go to bed——”