But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people quicker than anything, I think. She's like a mother to Mary in her ways; and he bears a good character, as far as I could learn just in that hurry. We're drawing near home, and I've not said my say, Margaret. I want you to look after mother a bit. She'll not like my going, and I've got to break it to her yet. If she takes it very badly, I'll come back to-morrow night; but if she's not against it very much, I mean to stay till it's settled about Mary, one way or the other. Will, you know, will be there, Margaret, to help a bit in doing for mother." Will's being there made the only objection Margaret saw to this plan. She disliked the idea of seeming to throw herself in his way, and yet she did not like to say anything of this feeling to Jem, who had all along seemed perfectly unconscious of any love-affair, besides his own, in progress. So Margaret gave a reluctant consent. "If you can just step up to our house to-night, Jem, I'll put up a few things as may be useful to Mary, and then you can say when you'll likely be back. If you come home to-morrow night, and Will's there, perhaps I need not step up?" "Yes, Margaret, do! I shan't leave easy unless you go some time in the day to see mother. I'll come to-night, though; and now good-bye. Stay I do you think you could just coax poor Will to walk a bit home with you, that I might speak to mother by myself?" No! that Margaret could not do. That was expecting too great a sacrifice of bashful feeling. But the object was accomplished by Will's going up-stairs immediately on their return to the house, to indulge his mournful thoughts alone. As soon as Jem and his mother were left by themselves, he began on the subject uppermost in his mind. "Mother!" She put her handkerchief from her eyes, and turned quickly round, so as to face him where he stood, thinking what best to say. The little action annoyed him, and he rushed at once into the subject. "Mother! I am going back to Liverpool to-morrow morning to see how Mary Barton is." "And what's Mary Barton to thee, that thou shouldst be running after her in that-a-way?" "If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies--mother, I can't speak of what I shall feel if she dies." His voice was choked in his throat. For an instant his mother was interested by his words; and then came back the old jealousy of being supplanted in the affections of that son, who had been, as it were, newly born to her, by the escape he had so lately experienced from danger. So she hardened her heart against entertaining any feeling of sympathy; and turned away from the face, which recalled the earnest look of his childhood, when he had come to her in some trouble, sure of help and comfort. And coldly she spoke, in those tones which Jem knew and dreaded, even before the meaning they expressed was fully shaped. "Thou'rt old enough to please thysel. Old mothers are cast aside, and what they've borne forgotten as soon as a pretty face comes across. I might have thought of that last Tuesday, when I felt as if thou wert all my own, and the judge were some wild animal trying to rend thee from me. I spoke up for thee then, but it's all forgotten now, I suppose. "Mother! you know all this while, you know I can never forget any kindness you've ever done for me; and they've been many. Why should you think I've only room for one love in my heart? I can love you as dearly as ever, and Mary too, as much as man ever loved woman." He waited a reply. None was vouchsafed. "Mother, answer me!" said he, at last. "What mun I answer? You asked me no question." "Well! I ask you this now. To-morrow morning I go to Liverpool to see her who is as my wife. Dear mother! will you bless me on my errand? If it pleaseGod she recovers, will you take her to you as you would a daughter?" She could neither refuse nor assent. "Why need you go?" said she querulously, at getting in some mischief oranother again. Can't you stop at home quiet with me?" Jem got up, and walked about the room in despairing impatience. She would not understand his feelings. At last he stop d right before the place where she was sitting, wit an air of injured meekness on her face. "Mother! I often think what a good man father was! I've often heard you tell of your courting days; and of the accident that befell you, and how ill you were. How long is it ago?" "Near upon five-and-twenty years," said she, with a sigh. "You little thought when you were so ill you should live to have such a fine strapping son as I am, did you now?" She smiled a little, and looked up at him, which was just what he wanted. "Thou'rt not so fine a man as thy father was, by a deal;" said she, looking at him with much fondness, notwithstanding her depreciatory words. He took another turn or two up and down the room. He wanted to bend the subject round to his own case. "Those were happy days when father was alive!" "You may say so, lad! Such days as will never come again to me, at any rate." She sighed sorrow-fully. "Mother!" said he, at last, stopping short, and taking her hand in his with tender affection, "you'd like me to be as happy a man as my father was before me, would not you? You'd like me to have some one to make me as happy as you made father? Now, would not you, dear mother?" "I did not make him as happy as I might ha' done, murmured she, in a low, sad voice of self-reproach. "Th' accident gave a jar to my temper it's never got the better of; and now he's gone, where he can never know how I grieve for having frabbed him as. I did." "Nay, mother, we don't know that!" said Jem, with gentle soothing. "Any how, you and father got along with as few rubs as most people. But for his sake, dear mother, don't say me nay, now that I come to you to ask your blessing before setting out to see her, who is to be my wife, if ever woman is; for his sake, if not for mine, love her who I shall bring home to be to me all you were to him and, mother! I do not ask for a truer or a tenderer heart than yours is, in the long run." The hard look left her face; though her eyes were still averted from Jem's gaze, it was more because they were brimming over with tears, called forth by his words, than because any angry feeling yet remained. And when his manly voice died away in low pleadings, she lifted up her hands, and bent down her son's head below the level of her own; and then she solemnly uttered a blessing. "God bless thee, Jem, my own dear lad. And may He bless Mary Barton for thy sake." Jem's heart leapt up, and from this time hope took the place of fear in his anticipations with regard to Mary. "Mother! you show your own true self to Mary, and she'll love you as dearly as I do." So with some few smiles, and some few tears, and much earnest talking, the evening wore away. "I must be off to see Margaret. Why, it's near ten o'clock! Could you have thought it? Now don't you stop up for me, mother. You and Will go to bed, for you've both need of it. I shall be home in an hour." Margaret had felt the evening long and lonely; and was all but giving up the thoughts of Jem's coming that night, when she heard his step at the door. He told her of his progress with his mother; he told her his hopes, and was silent on the subject of his fears. "To think how sorrow and joy are mixed up together. You'll date your start in life as Mary's acknowledged lover from poor Alice Wilson's burial day.
