And the months go by, and she stoops a little more as she walks, and—some one has thrown a cloth over the rabbit-hutch with its unfinished roof. And Mrs. Ward is curiously retrospective. It is useless to tell her of the things of the active world. She listens politely but she does not hear. She is full of reminiscences of Ernie’s and Lily’s childhood. She recounts again and again the story of how Ernie when he was a little boy ordered five tons of coal from a coal merchant to be sent to a girls’ school in Dalston High Road. She describes the coal carts arriving in the morning, and the consternation of the head-mistress.
“O dear, O dear,” she says; “the things he did!”
She does not talk much of the Stellings, but one day she says meditatively:
“Mrs. Frow Stelling thought a lot of that boy Hans. So she did of the other, as far as that goes. It’s only natural like, I suppose.”
V
As time went on Tom Ward lost all hope. He said he was convinced that the boy was killed. Having arrived at this conclusion he seemed to become more composed. He gradually began to accustom himself to the new point of view. But with Mrs. Ward the exact opposite was the case.
She was convinced that the boy was alive, but she suffered terribly.
There came a time—it was in early April—when one felt that the strain could not last. She seemed to lose all interest in the passing world and lived entirely within herself. Even the arrival of Lily’s baby did not rouse her. She looked at the child queerly, as though she doubted whether any useful or happy purpose was served by its appearance.
It was a boy.