“I lost my son at sea,” said the woman, with a sigh. “You favor him rather.”
Mr. Letts's face softened. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry you lost him, I mean.”
“At least, I suppose he would have been like you,” said the other; “but it's nine years ago now. He was just sixteen.”
Mr. Letts—after a calculation—nodded. “Just my age,” he said. “I was twenty-five last March.”
“Sailed for Melbourne,” said the woman. “My only boy.”
Mr. Letts cleared his throat, sympathetically.
“His father died a week after he sailed,” continued the other, “and three months afterwards my boy's ship went down. Two years ago, like a fool, I married again. I don't know why I'm talking to you like this. I suppose it is because you remind me of him.”
“You talk away as much as you like,” said Mr. Letts, kindly. “I've got nothing to do.”
He lit another cigarette, and, sitting in an attitude of attention, listened to a recital of domestic trouble that made him congratulate himself upon remaining single.
“Since I married Mr. Green I can't call my soul my own,” said the victim of matrimony as she rose to depart. “If my poor boy had lived things would have been different. His father left the house and furniture to him, and that's all my second married me for, I'm sure. That and the bit o' money that was left to me. He's selling some of my boy's furniture at this very moment. That's why I came out; I couldn't bear it.”