“Poor mother!” he said, softly. By dint of having children himself Harry had come to a little understanding. “She will never stand in anyone’s way,” he said. He began to perceive a little what life was to some souls. She had been happy in little Liddy, and now Liddy was going too. She would not struggle, but resign the last, with one more pathetic wringing of her hands. She had wrung those hands often for him, and he, more than any, had wrung her heart, and had thought little of it; but somehow he perceived it now. She would stand in nobody’s way. She would give up, having given up all her life; and now there would be no compensation possible, nature herself would be against her. A great pang of pity was in his heart for his mother. She did not know yet what was in store for her. Whoever was happy it must always be her fate to suffer for them all. The rough little country phaeton, which Harry remembered long years ago, was waiting for them in the early morning at the station. Nobody knew that Harry was coming. The man who drove it stared at him. It was none of the young masters he knew (middle-aged Will and Tom being still indifferently called t’ young masters at the White House), and yet there was a look of the young masters, and of the old master, too, about this finely dressed (as Robin thought), foreigneering gentleman, wrapping himself in his fur-lined coat against the chill freshness of the morning. Was it some one Miss Liddy had picked up in her travels? Liddy had a perception, as she got into the carriage--or, rather, remembered afterwards, that she had perceived other people, strangers, getting out at the little country station, which was not a very usual thing; but she was excited and preoccupied, and did not stay to look who they were, or even notice them much, at the time. She had not written home, except the merest intimation of her return, since she had found her brother, and now she was a little alarmed at her own reserve, wondering what her mother would say, whether she would know him at once, and what effect the discovery would have upon her. Such things had been known as people dying of joy. She began to grow alarmed and very nervous; and Liddy looked round upon everything, to tell the truth, with troubled and doubtful eyes. She was afraid even of the sight of the home landscape, the grey hills, the misty valley, the limestone houses, and dividing dykes, which were so very different from everything she had been seeing. But it was a beautiful morning, and all this grey northern world was bathed in the early glory of the sun; and to Lydia’s great relief the country had not grown smaller, or the hills insignificant, or the sky dirty or prosaic, as people in Italy said. The blue was pale, but still it was heavenly blue; the white mists on the hills, here and there breaking away like the opening of a prison, unfolding on both sides and showing the grey slopes, the stony peaks, the lonely stormy Fells, were