‘Might rally?’ she said, thoughtfully, ‘I should scarcely think it likely.’ She was quite calm. John seated so that he felt her breath upon him, could scarcely help shivering with a nervous chill which seemed to come from her. She remarked this at once. ‘You are cold,’ she said. ‘Put up the window at your side; no doubt it is your nerves: you have been kept on the strain all day, or perhaps for some days. It is not a good thing for you at your age: put up the window, I will keep mine open; I like the air. Have they let you be with her?’ ‘A little last night--not before.’ ‘I am glad they had so much sense as that. She would talk to you, no doubt, and you would be very much affected. Poor boy!’ There seemed a momentary wavering in her, as if she might have turned to him with something like tenderness. Her arm seemed to him to move. He thought she was going to put it round him, and his heart filled with a sudden rush of warmth and softness. His mother! But either she had never meant it, or she changed her mind. She altered her position only enough to change from one hand to another the little bag she carried. And yet he could not help feeling that she meant more than that. ‘Did she say anything to you?--I mean anything beyond what she would naturally say?’ ‘She spoke to me about you, mother.’ Once more the dark figure at his side moved. A sort of thrill seemed to run through her. She took a little time apparently to compose and command herself. ‘What did she say to you of me?’ ‘I did not understand it,’ said John. She turned, and seemed to look at him as if asking herself whether this simplicity was assumed or not. Then, with a touch of divination, put her hand upon his arm for a moment, and repeated, ‘Poor boy! I can see you are half-dazed with trouble and fatigue,’ she said. ‘Mother!’ said John, ‘mother----’ Again there was that faint thrill and moving in the profile that showed against the dim night of the further window. There was a soft suffusion of whiteness in the air from an unseen moon, and he could see the outline of her face and figure against it. But, if she had been moved by any impulse of love, she restrained it once more. ‘I would rather,’ she said, quickly, ‘that you used that name as little as possible while I am here. I am your mother, certainly; but we’ve been separated for a long time, and I have my reasons, chiefly for your own sake, for preferring not to be talked about among your village people, or discussed who I am. I mean no unkindness,’ she added, after a little pause. ‘Must I not call you mother?’ asked the boy. He was so tired, so dazed, as she said, so broken down with weariness and wonder and grieving that the sharp tone in his voice was more the petulance of a child than the indignation which began faintly to rise among the other emotions that were too much for him. ‘Not except when we are alone,’ she said. ‘Is this the village? are we near?’