Mrs. Saltren removed her petroleum lamp-glass, struck a match, and proceeded slowly to light her lamp.
“I remember James telling me once, how that he had been in France, I think he called it La Vendée, where the fields are divided by dykes full of stagnant water; and one of the industries of the place is the collecting of leeches. The men roll up their breeches above the knee and carry a pail, and wade in the ditches, and now and again throw up a leg, and sweep off two, three, or it may be a dozen leeches from the calf into the pail. Then they wade further, and up with a leg again and off with a fresh batch of leeches. I haven’t been in a big house, and seen the ways of the aristocracy, and not found out that they are waders in leech dykes, and that it is as much as they can do to keep their calves clear, and their blood from being sucked out of them altogether. Now what I want to know is, if a starved leech does bite, and suck and swell, and is not wiped off and sent to market, but gets reg’lar blown out with blood, hasn’t that leech a right to say that he has in him the blood of the man to whom he has attached himself? I’d ask any independent jury whether my Giles Inglett has eaten and drunk more at Saltren’s expense, or at that of his lordship, whether he does not owe his very life to his lordship as much as to me, for he’d have died of decline, if he had not been sent to the South? And if he owes his life to Lord Lamerton equally as he does to me, and has been fed and clothed, and educated by him and not by Saltren, why then, like the leech, he can say he has the blood of the Lamertons in him. That is common sense. And again—bother that lamp!”
Mrs. Saltren in place of turning the wick up, had turned it down, and was obliged to remove the chimney and strike another match.
“And then,” she continued, “if Lord Lamerton has not chose to wipe him off into the pail, who is to blame but himself? If he choose to keep his leg in a leech pond, there’s neither rhyme nor reason in my objecting; and he has no claim to cry out. Put Giles on a plate, and sprinkle salt on him, and whose blood will come out? Any one can see he is a gentleman! He has imbibed it all, his manners, his polish, his knowledge, everything he has, from Lord Lamerton and others, all the world can see it.”
Then in came the young man about whom she was arguing with herself. He could not speak, so great was his agitation, but he went to his mother, and threw his arms about her, clasped her to his heart, and kissed her. For some time he could not say anything, but after a while he conquered his emotion sufficiently to say—
“Oh, my mother—my poor mother! Oh, my dear, my ill-used mother!” and then again his emotions got the better of him. “I cannot,” he said, after a pause, with a renewed effort to govern himself, “I cannot say what I shall do now, I cannot even think, but I am sure of one thing, I must remain no longer at the park.”
“My boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Saltren. “Fall off yourself into the plate and salt!”
“I do not understand,” said he. She left him in his ignorance, she had been thinking of the leeches.
“My dear Giles! Whatever you do, don’t breathe a word of this to any one.”
“Mother, I will not, you may be sure of that.”