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"Oh, my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my heart will break outright,"
said his mother, with a sort of cry. Then she calmed herself, for
she yearned to persuade him to her own belief. "Thou never asked,
and thou'rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking--but it
were all to be near Lizzie's old place that I settled down on this
side o' Manchester; and the very day at after we came, I went to her
old missus, and asked to speak a word wi' her. I had a strong mind
to cast it up to her, that she should ha' sent my poor lass away,
without telling on it to us first; but she were in black, and looked
so sad I could na' find in my heart to threep it up. But I did ask
her a bit about our Lizzie. The master would have turned her away at
a day's warning (he's gone to t'other place; I hope he'll meet wi'
more mercy there than he showed our Lizzie--I do), and when the
missus asked her should she write to us, she says Lizzie shook her
head; and when she speered at her again, the poor lass went down on
her knees, and begged her not, for she said it would break my heart
(as it has done, Will--God knows it has)," said the poor mother,
choking with her struggle to keep down her hard overmastering grief,
"and her father would curse her--Oh, God, teach me to be patient."
She could not speak for a few minutes--"and the lass threatened, and
said she'd go drown herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home--
and so -
"Well! I'd got a trace of my child--the missus thought she'd gone to
th' workhouse to be nursed; and there I went--and there, sure enough,
she had been--and they'd turned her out as she were strong, and told
her she were young enough to work--but whatten kind o' work would be
open to her, lad, and her baby to keep?"
Will listened to his mother's tale with deep sympathy, not unmixed
with the old bitter shame. But the opening of her heart had unlocked
his, and after awhile he spoke -
"Mother! I think I'd e'en better go home. Tom can stay wi' thee. I
know I should stay too, but I cannot stay in peace so near--her--
without craving to see her--Susan Palmer, I mean."
"Has the old Mr. Palmer thou telled me on a daughter?" asked Mrs.
Leigh.
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