The mother took up the notes, and counted them slowly; for she had been inured to grief, and was always calm, even when her heart beat fast with the throbs of anguish.
"And whaur fae, laddie?" she said, as she turned her grey eye and scanned deeply the pale face of her son.
Silent, even dogged! Where now his metaphysics, his gibes on the physicalities, the moralities, the spiritualities?—all bundled up in a vibrating chord.
"Whaur fae, Charlie," had she repeated, still looking at him.
"The devil!" cried he, stung by her searching look, which brought back a gleam of the old rebellion.
"A gude paymaster to his servants," she said; "but I'm no ane o' them yet; and may the Lord, wham I serve, even while his chastening hand is heavy upon me, preserve me frae his bribes!" And laying down the notes, she added, not lightly, as it might seem, but seriously, yet quietly,
"Nae wonder they're warm."
The notes had carried the heat of his burning hand.
"The auld story—billiards," said she again; "for they are the devil's cue and balls."
No answer; and the mother seating herself again, looked stedfastly and suspiciously at him; but she could not catch the eye of her son, who sat doggedly determined not to reveal his secret, and as determined also to elude her looks, searching as they were, and sufficient to enter his very soul. Yet she loved him too well to objurgate where she was only as yet suspicious; and in the quietness of the hour, she fell for a moment into her widowed habit of speaking as if none were present but herself.