“I can’t say as I ever found my Tibbie much trouble!” Mrs. Clapham’s tone was again defiant. “What, she could see to her buttons and tapes nigh as soon as she could walk, and, as for her needle, she took to it like a duck on a pond!” “Ay, well, you see, mine was a lad....” Emma’s glance left her neighbour’s face and rose to the mantelpiece, where Poor Stephen, in khaki, looked from a silver frame. Mrs. Clapham’s glance followed suit, and it seemed to her that the sad eyes shifted as the mother’s gaze came up.... She had winced again at Emma’s last words, and begun her usual rubbing of knees. In common with many women during the Great War, she had felt ashamed of not owning a son to add to the general loss. Stephen and Tibbie had done their best to make her feel that Stephen was really hers, but there was no getting past the fact that he was really Emma’s. Certainly, here in the gloomy room, where the silver frame was the only thing that was polished and shone, there was no disguising the knowledge that he was really Emma’s.... The latter, as if subconsciously aware of this recrudescence of war-time shame, suddenly left the table and moved across to the hearth. Reaching up for the photograph, she looked at it for a moment, and then handed it to the visitor. Stephen’s mother-in-law took it reverently, if reluctantly, feeling the silver setting smooth and cool against her hand. “You’ll happen not have seen Stephen’s last likeness,” Emma remarked smugly, deliberately ignoring the fact that in all probability Mrs. Clapham had one of her own. “It was took after he got his commission, as you’ll see, and there’s none could look more of a gentleman, I’m sure. His lordship come to see me after Stephen was killed, and he was rarely taken with yon picture. ‘He’s the very spit and image of you, Mrs. Catterall,’ says he, sitting there, wi’ t’ likeness in his hand, same as it might be you. ‘The spit and image,’ he says, ‘and right proud you must be to think as your face is one as the whole British nation takes its hat off to, to-day!’ (T’ likeness was in t’ _Daily Sketch_, you’ll think on, and a deal more papers besides). ‘The only son of his mother, and her a widow!’ his lordship says soft-like, and looking that grieved and kind.... Then I showed him photo as Stephen’s wife sent of Stephen’s children, and I give you my word he very near started to cry! ‘Stephen’ll never die as long as them children are alive,’ says he. ‘What, the little lad’s that like him it might be Stephen himself come back again from the dead!’”