And then he had begun to crawl round the nursery, very fond of coal he had been, and always full of mischief. And they had all said then what a fine man he was going to grow up into, and so he is, but they none of them had the gift of sight so they couldn’t have foretold this. When she had been told she was sitting in this chair as like as she might be now and she said “Lord have mercy on us” she remembered it as if it was yesterday, though it did seem an age away, and that only six months really. In the next room in the old day-nursery was all the toys he used to have and her first thought was that he would never be able to play with them again. You got a bit mixed up with time when you grew older. They were all in the cupboard here the tin soldiers scarlet and blue with some cannon and the spotted horse which he used to be that fond of and the marbles with colours inside that he always wanted to swallow, they was a peril them things, and the box of bricks as he grew older so that they said he was going to be an architeck, and what would he be now? He had loved his toys, she could remember his sitting on his heels and getting excited over the soldiers as if they was real and fighting a real battle. They were all there in the cupboard waiting. Nothing had been lost and now that her time was coming perhaps when she was gone they would throw them away or give them to some poor child instead of keeping them, maybe for his children if he had any. Waste that was. Would he marry now? And would a young lady want to marry a blind young man? Ah, but if they knew her Master John of course they would. She ought to know him, she had known him longer than anyone now, and he was so good and kind-hearted even if he was a bit rough at times, but then all young people were like that. She would like to see his son but she might go off at any minute, the doctor said so, it was her heart, she wouldn’t last on to see him. But it wasn’t doing him no good to be following around of that girl with her father. That man, and him in the church too, it was a sacrilege that’s what it was. And the shame on the village and on the house. They was the laughing-stock of the countryside. And him going and living quite near just to spite them, oh if the master was here, he would send him packing and that daughter of his parading of herself about. She would talk to Mrs. Haye she ought to know what everyone was saying. She had been sitting in this very chair when who should come in but Mr. William and she could see something was up on account of his being out of breath and he had said “The young master ’as been ’urt” he said, and she had been turned to stone so to speak, as it says in the Book, and he had gone on about the accident on the railway and how he would be blind for ever. And she had said “Lord have mercy on us. Lord have mercy on us.”