And his mother had snatched the miniature almost fiercely from his hand, saying proudly:
“Of course he did, lad; your father was a gentleman.”
A gentleman! Philip thought of it often afterward, wondering what his mother could have meant, for the only gentlemen the boy had ever seen lived in fine houses, and their wives rode in carriages and wore silk dresses and fine bonnets, while their home was a humble miner’s cottage, and his mother—and then Philip, half ashamed of the thought, had run and put his arms about his mother’s neck and smoothed the coarse cotton cloth of her dress with his loving hands, telling himself that although she did not wear the fine clothes of a lady, yet she was as sweet and beautiful and good as any lady in the land.
It never occurred to Philip to wonder that Mag (the only name by which his mother was known) could neither read nor write, for the people who lived all about them, and who spent the greater part of their lives in the mine, were of course very ignorant, there being no such things in those days as compulsory education or laws forbidding child-labor in the mines. Philip, therefore, at ten years of age did not know a single letter of the alphabet, and had seen only one or two books in his life. But although his mother was no wiser than her child so far as books went, she seemed somehow to have gained a strange knowledge of life; indeed, no one could look at her without feeling sure that she had loved and felt and suffered much. She was a large, grand-looking young woman, with a face and figure like a Greek statue, and she was almost as silent. Philip had never heard her laugh, and she seldom talked with the miners or joined in their rough merriment and sometimes rather coarse jokes. In reply to their greetings or questions she always gave short, civil enough answers, never voluntarily prolonging the conversation. But her silence was never sullen, and they all seemed to understand her; indeed, there was not one of them who would not gladly have done her a good turn, and she always acknowledged their favors gratefully.
It was often remarked that she seemed to take a sort of fierce pleasure in doing the hardest and roughest kinds of work, labor which usually was given only to the men; but she was still young and very strong, and it may have been that she dreaded the time for thought which idleness might have brought. At any rate, she chose the work and labored faithfully and patiently for the wages which supported her father and child.
Philip was constantly with his mother, and as he was a trifle shy and made few friends among the rough boys and girls of the neighborhood, he seemed to have concentrated all the affection of his warm little heart upon Mag, who loved him in return with a passionate devotion.
Philip and Mag and her old father were happy together in their humble home, which, although it was precisely the same as all the other huts which were huddled together around the opening of the mine, had about it an unusual air of comfort and refinement. There were white curtains at the small windows, a honeysuckle climbed over the porch, and at one side was a small garden, where it was Philip’s delight to work with his grandfather; it was always gay with flowers, which seemed to thrive in spite of the poor soil, and there were vegetables and berries too, which often found their way to the tables of less fortunate neighbors. Within the cottage were a few small comforts not usually to be found in the miners’ dwellings, a square or two of carpet, faded and worn, but warm and comfortable under the feet on cold nights, a red table-cover to replace the white one used for meals (a most unusual luxury), and a lamp with a colored silk shade. There was besides an easy-chair or two, and in one corner a plain oak writing-desk which was regarded by the neighbors with some awe; it was carefully locked, and Philip had often wondered where the key which fitted it might be, but somehow he had always hesitated to ask, feeling, perhaps almost instinctively, that the explanation might cause his mother pain or embarrassment.