“I remember my mother? I should think I remembered my mother. You know it’s only a week to-day--or was it yesterday?” “It was yesterday. You might remember the day you were married, I think, without asking me,” said Patty, with spirit. “Well, then, you parted from her that day. She wasn’t ill then, was she, dear?” Upon which Gervase laughed. “Mother’s always ill,” he said. “She has such health you never know when she’s well, or, at least, so she says. It’s in her head, or her liver, or her big toe. No!” he cried, with another great laugh, “it’s father as has the devil in his big toe.” “Gervase, do be serious for a moment. Your mother has been very ill, dreadful bad, and we never knew----” “I told you,” he said calmly, “she’s always bad; and you can never tell from one day to another, trust herself, when she mayn’t die.” “Oh, Gervase,” cried Patty, holding his arm with both her hands: “you are fond of her a little bit, ain’t you, dear? She’s your mother, though she hasn’t been very nice to me.” “Lord,” cried Gervase, “how she will jump when she knows that I’m here, and on my own hook, and have got a wife of my own! Mind, it is you that have got to tell her, and not me.” “A wife that will always try to be a comfort to you,” said Patty. “Oh, my poor dear boy! Gervase, your poor mother (remember that I’m here to take care of you whatever happens),--Gervase, your mother will never need to be told. She’s dead and gone, poor lady, she’s dead and gone!” Gervase stared at her, and again opened his mouth in a great laugh. “That’s one of your dashed stories,” he said. “It isn’t a story at all, it’s quite true. She had a stroke that very day. Fancy, just the very day when we---- And we never heard a word. If we had heard I should have been the very first to bring you home.” “What good would that have done?” Gervase said sullenly, “we were better where we were.” “Not and her dying, and wanting her son.” Gervase was cowed and troubled by the news, which gave him a shock which he could not understand. It made him sullen and difficult to manage. “You’re playing off one of your jokes upon me,” he said. “I playing a joke! I’d have found something better than a funeral to joke about. Gervase, we have just come back in time. The funeral’s to-morrow, and oh! I’m so thankful we came home. I’m going to send for Sally Fletcher to make me up some nice deep mourning with crape, like a lady wears for her own mother.” “She was no mother of yours,” said Gervase, with a frown. “No; nor she didn’t behave like one: but being her son’s wife and one that is to succeed her, I must get my mourning deep; and you and me, we’ll go. We’ll walk next to Sir Giles, as chief mourners,” she said. Gervase gave a lowering look at her, and then he turned away to the open window, to count as he had been doing before, but in changing tones, the white horses and the brown. CHAPTER XXII.