“Now you must go home,” she said. “You must not keep your mother waiting for her tea. There! I have raked the fire out. We must not forget to lock the door behind us.”
As they stood on the doorstep the wind blew a whirl of dead leaves about them.
“They are my old thoughts,” he said; “see, they are all withered.”
They walked together silently. At the vicarage he left her and went homeward.
The deserted flour store at the corner of two roads, the house that had been burnt hollow ten years before and still lifted its blackened beams, the straggling and leafless fruit-trees rising above garden walls, the church where he was christened—these foster-mothers of his infancy seemed to nod and shake their heads over him.
“Mother,” he said, hurriedly entering the room, “we are going to London.”
“As you wish. I always knew you would be a rolling stone,” she answered, and went out to tell the servant that as soon as she had finished the week’s washing they must pack up everything, for they were going to London.
“Yes, we must pack up,” said the old peasant; she did not stop peeling the onion in her hand—she had not comprehended. In the middle of the night she suddenly started up in bed with a pale face and a prayer to the Virgin whose image hung over her head—she had now comprehended.
