During this complaining and muttering Lovel had busied himself with making her comfortable in bed; he covered her over, arranged her pillow for her, placed a glass of water within her reach,--she always wanted matches too, but was not allowed them;--he now looked down upon her as she lay, her helpless form under the shapeless heap of bedclothes and her scant grey locks straggling over the pillow. She had the same eyes as her sons, in what must have been a fine bony face; and the same cunning look frequently stole into them as stole into Olver’s. “I hope you have not again been filling the lad’s head with the rubbish I have so often forbidden,” said Lovel anxiously in reply to her last remark. “A nice way for you to speak to your mother!” she croaked. “Olver doesn’t speak so to me; forbidden, indeed! Never you mind what Olver and I have been saying. If I had only been given Olver to myself I could have made him into something better than a mere simpleton, as you all dub him; but no, I wasn’t to have Olver to myself: there was always Nicholas between us, with his ‘forbidden’ ... forbidden.... Anyhow, Nicholas hasn’t won altogether,” she muttered, not quite daring to speak too distinctly; “there are hours every day when Nicholas isn’t at home.” “I can always get Olver to tell me the truth,” said Lovel, “and if I find you have been at your tricks I shall have to keep him away from your room.” The old woman laughed; a grating and unpleasant laugh, between fear and amusement. “And to do that you will have to stay at home, and then where will the money come from, my pretty boy?” “True,” said Lovel, “I am obliged to go out to work to make money for you and Olver, but Olver can come with me, and so he shall.” “And leave me alone here to die, if so be,” said the old woman, beginning to whimper, and she snuffled into her bed-clothes, and said that Nicholas was a cruel son to her. “The remedy lies with you,” he said quietly; and then, straightening the clothes for her again, he told her that he would not take Olver away from her unless she obliged him to. “But I am responsible for Olver,” he added, “and we are ill enough looked upon in the village already; you know, mother, that I must keep Olver in order, and his brain is too weak to be trusted with dangerous matter.” He wondered why he took the trouble to say this, since he knew that it was useless attempting to appeal to the old woman’s good sense or better feelings, as she had neither. She only laughed again. He paused beside her for a moment, but there was nothing more to say, and wishing her good-night he took up the candle and left the room. Out in the passage he heard her voice calling him back. “Matches, Nicholas: let me have the matches to-night.” He shook his head in refusal. “Cruel to me, Nicholas; and my own son too: cruel and hard; he bullies us both....” Lovel shut the door and went downstairs, but the mumble of her complaining pursued him still.