“Exactly so.”
“But where and how?”
“At some place not very far down on the other side the range, where he had hidden his old clothes.”
“And who, in the name of all that we hold most sacred, do you take him to have been—for I see you know more than you have yet told me?”
“My son, he was Higgs the Sunchild, father to that boy whom I love next to my husband more dearly than any one in the whole world.”
She folded her arms about him for a second, without kissing him, and left him. “And now,” she said, the moment she had closed the door—“and now I may cry.”
She did not cry for long, and having removed all trace of tears as far as might be, she returned to her son outwardly composed and cheerful. “Shall I say more now,” she said, seeing how grave he looked, “or shall I leave you, and talk further with you to-morrow?”
“Now—now—now!”
“Good! A little before Higgs came here, the Mayor, as he now is, poor, handsome, generous to a fault so far as he had the wherewithal, was adored by all the women of his own rank in Sunch’ston. Report said that he had adored many of them in return, but after having known me for a very few days, he asked me to marry him, protesting that he was a changed man. I liked him, as every one else did, but I was not in love with him, and said so; he said he would give me as much time as I chose, if I would not point-blank refuse him; and so the matter was left.