the advantage—but look, THEY had the young mother. You should have had me for your eldest son.”
“I didn't arrange it,” she remonstrated. “Come to consider, you're as much to blame as me.”
He turned on her, white, his eyes furious.
“What are you old for!” he said, mad with his impotence. “WHY can't you walk? WHY can't you come with me to places?”
“At one time,” she replied, “I could have run up that hill a good deal better than you.”
“What's the good of that to ME?” he cried, hitting his fist on the wall. Then he became plaintive. “It's too bad of you to be ill. Little, it is—”
“Ill!” she cried. “I'm a bit old, and you'll have to put up with it, that's all.”
They were quiet. But it was as much as they could bear. They got jolly again over tea. As they sat by Brayford, watching the boats, he told her about Clara. His mother asked him innumerable questions.
“Then who does she live with?”
“With her mother, on Bluebell Hill.”
“And have they enough to keep them?”
“I don't think so. I think they do lace work.”
“And wherein lies her charm, my boy?”
“I don't know that she's charming, mother. But she's nice. And she seems straight, you know—not a bit deep, not a bit.”
“But she's a good deal older than you.”
“She's thirty, I'm going on twenty-three.”
“You haven't told me what you like her for.”
“Because I don't know—a sort of defiant way she's got—a sort of angry way.”
Mrs. Morel considered. She would have been glad now for her son to fall in love with some woman who would—she did not know what. But he fretted so, got so furious suddenly, and again was melancholic. She wished he knew some nice woman—She did not know what she wished, but left it vague. At any rate, she was not hostile to the idea of Clara.
Annie, too, was getting married. Leonard had gone away to work in Birmingham. One week-end when he was home she had said to him:
“You don't look very well, my lad.”
“I dunno,” he said. “I feel anyhow or nohow, ma.”
He called her “ma” already in his boyish fashion.
“Are you sure they're good lodgings?” she asked.
“Yes—yes. Only—it's a winder when you have to pour your own tea out—an' nobody to grouse if you team it in your saucer and sup it up. It somehow takes a' the taste out of it.”
Mrs. Morel laughed.
“And so it knocks you up?” she said.
“I dunno. I want to get married,” he blurted, twisting his fingers and looking down at his boots. There was a silence.
“But,” she exclaimed, “I thought you said you'd wait another year.”
“Yes, I did say so,” he replied stubbornly.
Again she considered.
“And you know,” she said, “Annie's a bit of a spendthrift. She's saved no more than eleven pounds. And I know, lad, you haven't had much chance.”
He coloured up to the ears.
“I've got thirty-three quid,” he said.
“It doesn't go far,” she answered.
He said nothing, but twisted his fingers.
“And you know,” she said, “I've nothing—”
“I didn't want, ma!” he cried, very red, suffering and remonstrating.
“No, my lad, I know. I was only wishing I had. And take away five pounds for the wedding and things—it leaves twenty-nine pounds. You won't do much on that.”
He twisted still, impotent, stubborn, not looking up.
“But do you really want to get married?” she asked. “Do you feel as if you ought?”
He gave her one straight look from his blue eyes.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then,” she replied, “we must all do the best we can for it, lad.”
The next time he looked up there were tears in his eyes.
“I don't want Annie to feel handicapped,” he said, struggling.
“My lad,” she said, “you're steady—you've got a decent place. If a man had NEEDED me I'd have married him on his last week's wages. She may find it a bit hard to start humbly. Young girls ARE like that. They look forward to the fine home they think they'll have. But I had expensive furniture. It's not everything.”
So the wedding took place almost immediately. Arthur came home, and was splendid in uniform. Annie looked nice in a dove-grey dress that she could take for Sundays. Morel called her a fool for getting married, and was cool with his son-in-law. Mrs. Morel had white tips in her bonnet, and some white on her blouse, and was teased by both her sons for fancying herself so grand. Leonard was jolly and cordial, and felt a fearful fool. Paul could not quite see what Annie wanted to get married for. He was fond of her, and she of him. Still, he hoped rather lugubriously that it would turn out all right. Arthur was astonishingly handsome in his scarlet and yellow, and he knew it well, but was secretly ashamed of the uniform. Annie cried her eyes up in the kitchen, on leaving her mother. Mrs. Morel cried a little, then patted her on the back and said:
“But don't cry, child, he'll be good to you.”
Morel stamped and said she was a fool to go and tie herself up. Leonard looked white and overwrought. Mrs. Morel said to him:
“I s'll trust her to you, my lad, and hold you responsible for her.”
“You can,” he said, nearly dead with the ordeal. And it was all over.
When Morel and Arthur were in bed, Paul sat talking, as he often did, with his mother.
“You're not sorry she's married, mother, are you?” he asked.
“I'm not sorry she's married—but—it seems strange that she should go from me. It even seems to me hard that she can prefer to go with her Leonard. That's how mothers are—I know it's silly.”
“And shall you be miserable about her?”
“When I think of my own wedding day,” his mother answered, “I can only hope her life will be different.”
“But
