She stood in the centre of her kitchen floor, as I handed her son’s letter to her. The contents surprised and annoyed her. Though there was no scorn in her reception of me, I yet felt instinctively that she would rather not have received the news. The announcement was too sudden and precipitate to please a mother who, until now, had been a law to her favourite son. She took her own time to express herself. She asked me how I had found her house, whether I was hungry and tired, quietly observing me the while. She set before me an abundance of choice food. Her pattens signalled her movements in the pantry, dairy, shop, and beer-cellar; but I knew she was thinking of me, and the letter from her son. Each time she came in to add some dish to the fare she was spreading for me, I felt her searching eyes on me. This was an ominous beginning, and made me feel subdued as I sat in the shadow of the ingle-nook. Some neighbours came in to quench their thirst with my aunt’s brewing, and from my place I could not fail to hear snatches of the conversation, most of which related to me. My aunt was relieving herself of her grievance, by which I discovered that her sense of prudence had been offended by my cousin Moses’ rash act. ‘At his age,’ she said, ‘to take upon himself the keep and education of a growing boy! He will be marrying himself shortly, and will have children enough of his own to bring up. Why should he bother himself about other people’s children? I say, “do what you can for your own, and let other people do for their families the same.” I don’t like this whim of Moses’ at all. In the first place, it is disrespect to me, his mother, who has striven hard to establish him in life; and, in the second place, it is extravagant, and every penny that that boy will cost him must be a loss to the family that he will have to look after in the course of a few years,’ etc., etc.