He sat on there in the stillness. Even the cats grew tired of play and were still. Then came the rain, rain that turned to sleet, that drove against the roofs outside and tried, by hiding in the corners of the chimneys, to look like snow. John thought of the tulips in Kensington Gardens. Spring can come gladsomely to England--it can come bitterly, too. Those poor people in the country! But would the country ever permit such weather as this? Even supposing it did, they would not be lonely as he was. Mr. Morrell had Mrs. Brown to talk to, and Mr. Brown had the company of Mrs. Morrell. There were Lizzie and Maud for Mrs. Rowse. Perhaps going down in the train, they would get a carriage to themselves and Lizzie would sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," and Maud would count cigarettes in her mind, and pack them up in her mind, or more probably forget that there ever were such things as cigarettes in the fresh delight of seeing the country with bread and cheese on all the hedges. Those young green buds on the hawthorn hedges are the pedestrian’s bread and cheese. But you know that, every bit as well as I. Well, it seemed that everyone had company but John. He took out of his pocket the last letter his mother had written him from Venice--took it out and spread it before him. If only she were there! If only her bright brown eyes were looking at him, what thousands of things there would be to say! What short stories and beginnings of new books would there not be to read her! And how sympathetically would she not listen. How frequently would she not place those dear paralysed hands of hers in his, as he read, at some new passage that she liked! "_My darling boy----_" He could hear that gentle voice of hers--like the sound you may hear in the ring of an old china tea-cup--he could hear it, as she had dictated it to his father to write---- "_This is where I begin counting the days to your visit. I dare not begin sooner--too many figures always bewildered me. It is now just about three months. Your father is much better than he was, and is doing a little work these days._" And here was added in a quaint little parenthesis of his father’s: "_She calls it work, my dear boy, just to please me--but when old men play, they like to hear it called work. You’ve got to do my work. And she is so quick--she has seen I have been writing more than she has said. I shall persuade her to let this stay in nevertheless._" Then, uninterrupted for a space the letter continued. "_I’m so pleased that your work is going on so well. I thought your last story was too sad, though. Must stories end unhappily? Yours always seem to. But I think I guess. They won’t always end like that. But your father says I am not to worry you on that point; that you can’t paint in a tone of gold what you see in a tone of grey, and that what you see now in a tone of grey, you will as likely as not see one day in a tone of gold._" Then, here, another parenthesis.