It was not often Uncle Dick said, "I can't"; indeed, it was one of his queer sayings that "can't" was a word no honest or brave lad ought to have in his dictionary. We turned away our eyes from him—he seemed not to like being looked at—and were silent.
"Well, I landed, and found myself walking London streets—not the rich, healthy, jolly young fellow who had come to have his fling there, but a poor shattered wretch almost in rags, and just a bag of bones. All that remained of my fortune were the few nuggets which I had sewed into my belt. I turned them, not without some difficulty, into food and clothing of the commonest kind, to make my money last as long as I could. I did not want to come home quite a beggar: if I had been, I should certainly never have come home at all.
"By mere chance—for I had altogether forgotten times and seasons—the day I came home was a Christmas morning. The bells were ringing, and all the good folk going to church—my mother, too, of course. We met at the garden gate. She did not know me, not the least in the world, but just bowed, thinking it was a stranger coming to call, till I said, 'Mother!' And then—
"Well, boys, that's neither here nor there. It's a commonplace saying, but one can't hear it too often, or remember it too well, that whatever else we have, we never can have but one mother. If she's a good one, make the most of her; if a middling one, put up with her; if a bad one, let her alone, and hold your tongue. You know whether I have any need to hold my tongue about your grandmother.
"But I can't talk about her, or about that Christmas-day. We did not go to church, and I doubt if we ate much Christmas dinner; but we talked and talked straight on up to ten o'clock at night, when she put me to bed, and tucked me in just as if I had been a little baby. Oh, how pleasant it was to sleep in sheets again—clean, fresh sheets—and have one's mother settling the pillow, and taking away the candle!
"My room happened to be that very dressing-room behind the nursery where Lily died: I could see the shelf where the grapes had stood, and the chair I climbed to reach them. With a sort of childish awe I recalled everything.
"'Mother,' I said, catching her by the gown, as she said good-night and kissed me, 'tell me one thing. What were you doing on my last birthday? that is, if you remember it at all?'
"She smiled: as if mothers could forget their boys' birthdays, even such scapegrace boys as I had been! Then a very grave look came into her face.
"'I was clearing out this room, turning it into a bedroom for any stray bachelor, little thinking the first would be you, Richard; but I did think of you, and, to tell you the truth, I was thinking of something very naughty you once did—here, in this very room.'"
"'And you said, over again, How could I take my sister's grapes? I heard it, mother—heard it in the middle of the Atlantic.' Then I told her the whole story.