“So it does, Mary. I’ll leave it with you when I go away. You say Dick couldn’t remember much of it; neither can I, Mary. More shame to me, for many an’ many a time has my poor mother tried to make me learn it off by heart.”
“You mother?” repeated Mary earnestly. “Is you mother livin’?”
“That is she. At least, I left her well an’ hearty in Pine Point settlement not many weeks agone.”
“Me wish me had mother,” said Mary with a sigh.
March gazed at the sad face of his fair companion with a perplexed yet sympathetic look. This was a new idea to him. Never having been without a mother, it had never entered into his head to think of such a thing as wishing for one.
“What you mother called?” said the girl, looking up quickly.
“Her name is Mary.”
“Yis! that very strange. Call same as me.”
“Not very strange, after all. There are a good number of Marys in the world,” replied March with a laugh. “See, here is her name on the flyleaf of the Bible, written with her own hand, too: ‘To my dear March, from his loving mother, Mary Marston, Pine Point settlement.’ Isn’t it a good round hand o’ write?”
“Very pritty,” replied Mary. But she had now begun to spell out the words of the book which had at last fallen into her hands, and March could not again draw her into general talk; so he was fain to sit down and help her to read the Bible.