Mrs. Ogden laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said, "Isaac, willn't ye come to your tea? we 're all waiting for you."
The spell was broken, and Ogden suddenly started to his feet. "Give me my hat," he said, "and let me go to my own house. I'm not fit to keep Christmas this year. How is a man to care about tea and cakes when he's murdered his own son? I'm best by myself; let me go up to Twistle Farm. D 'ye expect me to sing songs at supper, and drink rum-punch?"
"There'll be no songs, and you needn't drink unless you like, but just come and sit with us, my lad—you always used spendin' Christmas Eve at Milend, and Christmas Day too."
"It signifies nought what I used doin'. Isaac Ogden isn't same as he used to be. He'd have done better, I reckon, if he'd altered a month or two sooner. There'd have been a little lad here then to make Christmas merry for us all."
"Well, Isaac, I'm very sorry for little Jacob; but it cannot be helped now, you know, and it's no use frettin' so much over it."
"Mother," said Isaac Ogden, sternly, "it seems to me that you're not likely to spoil your health by frettin' over my little lad. You take it very easy it seems to me, and my brother takes it easy too, and so does Dr. Bardly—but then Dr. Bardly was nothing akin to him. Folk says that grandmothers care more for chilther than their own parents does; but you go on more like a stepmother nor a grandmother."
This was hard for Mrs. Ogden to bear, and she was strongly tempted to reveal the truth, but she forebore and remained silent. Ogden resumed,—
"I cannot tell how you could find in your heart to bake them little cakes when th' child isn't here to eat 'em."
The effort to restrain herself was now almost too much for Mrs. Ogden, since it was the fact that she had baked the said little cakes, or others exactly like them, and prepared various other dainties, for the especial enjoyment of Master Jacob, who at that very minute was regaling himself therewith in the privacy of his hiding-place. Still she kept silent.
After another pause, a great paroxysm of passionate regret seized Ogden—one of those paroxysms to which he was subject at intervals, but which in the presence of witnesses he had hitherto been able to contend against or postpone. "Oh, my little lad!" he cried aloud, "oh, my little innocent lad, that I drove away from me to perish! I'd give all I'm worth to see thee again, little 'un!" He suddenly stopped, and as the tears ran down his cheeks, he looked out of the window into the black night. "If I did but know," he said, slowly, and with inexpressible sadness—"mother, mother, if I did but know where his bits o' bones are lying!"