The girl listened to this utterance, and it filled her with a sort of weird wonder as at a revelation of heredity. Mrs. Hicks had ever been taciturn before her, and now this rapid outpouring of thoughts and phrases echoed like the very speech of the dead. Thus had Clement talked, and the girl dimly marvelled without understanding. The impression passed, and there awoke in Chris a sudden determination to whisper to this bereaved woman what she could not even tell her own mother. A second thought had probably changed her intention, but she did not wait for any second thought. She acted on impulse, rose, put her arms round the widow, and murmured her secret. The other started violently and broke her motionless posture before this intelligence. "Christ! And he knawed--my son?" "He knawed." "Then you needn't whisper it. There's awnly us three here." "An' no others must knaw. You'll never tell--never? You swear that?" "Me tell! No, no. To think! Then theer's real sorrow for you, tu, poor soul--real, grawin' sorrow tu. Differ'nt from mine, but real enough. Yet--" She relapsed into a stone-like repose. No facial muscle moved, but the expression of her mind appeared in her eyes and there gradually grew a hungry look in them--as of a starving thing confronted with food. The realisation of these new facts took a long time. No action accompanied it; no wrinkle deepened; no line of the dejected figure lifted; but when she spoke again her voice had greatly changed and become softer and very tremulous. "O my dear God! 't will be a bit of Clement! Had 'e thought o' that?" Then she rose suddenly to her feet and expression came to her face--a very wonderful expression wherein were blended fear, awe, and something of vague but violent joy--as though one suddenly beheld a loved ghost from the dead. "'T is as if all of un weern't quite lost! A li'l left--a cheel of his! Wummon! You'm a holy thing to me--a holy thing evermore! You'm bearin' sunshine for your summertime and my winter--if God so wills!" Then she lifted up her voice and cried to Chris with a strange cry, and knelt down at her feet and kissed her hands and stroked them. "Go to un," she said, leaping up; "go to Clem, an' tell un, in his ear, that I knaw. It'll reach him if you whisper it. His soul ban't so very far aways yet. Tell un I knaw, tu--you an' me. He'd glory that I knawed. An' pray henceforrard, as I shall, for a bwoy. Ax God for a bwoy--ax wi'out ceasin' for a son full o' Clem. Our sorrows might win to the Everlasting Ear this wance. But, for Christ's sake, ax like wan who has a right to, not fawning an' humble."