She cut me a great piece of bread, and then a great piece of butter, and I lost no time in discovering that the quality was worthy of the quantity. Mrs Wilson kept a grave silence for a good while. At last, as she was pouring out the second cup, she looked at me over the teapot, and said-- ‘You don’t remember your mother, I suppose, Master Cumbermede?’ ‘No, ma’am. I never saw my mother.’ ‘Within your recollection, you mean. But you must have seen her, for you were two years old when she died.’ ‘Did you know my mother, then, ma’am?’ I asked, but without any great surprise, for the events of the day had been so much out of the ordinary that I had for the time almost lost the faculty of wonder. She compressed her thin lips, and a perpendicular wrinkle appeared in the middle of her forehead, as she answered-- ‘Yes; I knew your mother.’ ‘She was very good, wasn’t she, ma’am?’ I said, with my mouth full of bread and butter. ‘Yes. Who told you that?’ ‘I was sure of it. Nobody ever told me.’ ‘Did they never talk to you about her?’ ‘No, ma’am.’ ‘So you are at Mr Elder’s, are you?’ she said, after another long pause, during which I was not idle, for my trouble being gone I could now be hungry. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ ‘How did you come here, then?’ ‘I walked with the rest of the boys; but they are gone home without me.’ Thanks to the kindness of Sir Giles, my fault had already withdrawn so far into the past, that I wished to turn my back upon it altogether. I saw no need for confessing it to Mrs Wilson; and there was none. ‘Did you lose your way?’ ‘No, ma’am.’ ‘What brought you here, then? I suppose you wanted to see the place.’ ‘The woman at the lodge told us the nearest way was through the park.’ I quite expected she would go on cross-questioning me, and then all the truth would have had to come out. But to my great relief, she went no further, only kept eyeing me in a manner so oppressive as to compel me to eat bread and butter and strawberry jam with self-defensive eagerness. I presume she trusted to find out the truth by-and-by. She contented herself in the mean time with asking questions about my uncle and aunt, the farm, the school, and Mr and Mrs Elder, all in a cold, stately, refraining manner, with two spots of red in her face--one on each cheek-bone, and a thin rather peevish nose dividing them. But her forehead was good, and when she smiled, which was not often, her eyes shone. Still, even I, with my small knowledge of womankind, was dimly aware that she was feeling her way with me, and I did not like her much. ‘Have you nearly done?’ she asked at length. ‘Yes, quite, thank you,’ I answered. ‘Are you going back to school to-night?’ ‘Yes, ma’am; of course.’ ‘How are you going?’ ‘If you will tell me the way--’ ‘Do you know how far you are from Aldwick?’ ‘No, ma’am.’ ‘Eight miles,’ she answered; ‘and it’s getting rather late.’