Paul Kelver | Page 9

sorry, nurse," I answered; "I thought--"
"Then," interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations, "you shouldn't think. London," continued the good dame, her experience no doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would be through my understanding of this matter, "is a big town, and you go there in a train. Some time--soon now--your father will write to your mother that everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your aunt will leave this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of you."
"And shan't we come back here ever any more?"
"Never again."
"And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?"
"Never again." I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.
"And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or you, ever any more?" In this moment of the crumbling from under me of all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey herself.
"Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And I do hope, Master Paul," added Mrs. Fursey, piously, "it may be a better one. That you will make up your mind to--"
But Mrs. Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have been, fell upon deaf ears. Here was I face to face with yet another problem. This life into which I had fallen: it was understandable! One went away, leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to return to them. One left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a new existence in a strange land. One parted from the friends one had always known, one saw them never again. Life was indeed a strange thing; and, would a body comprehend it, then must a body sit staring into the fire, thinking very hard, unheedful of all idle chatter.
That night, when my mother came to kiss me good-night, I turned my face to the wall and pretended to be asleep, for children as well as grown-ups have their foolish moods; but when I felt the soft curls brush my cheek, my pride gave way, and clasping my arms about her neck, and drawing her face still closer down to mine; I voiced the question that all the evening had been knocking at my heart:
"I suppose you couldn't send me back now, could you? You see, you've had me so long."
"Send you back?"
"Yes. I'd be too big for the stork to carry now, wouldn't I?"
My mother knelt down beside the bed so that her face and mine were on a level, and looking into her eyes, the fear that had been haunting me fell from me.
"Who has been talking foolishly to a foolish little boy?" asked my mother, keeping my arms still clasped about her neck.
"Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know," I answered, "and she said you could have done without me. Somehow, I did not mind repeating the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's fun.
My mother drew me closer to her.
"And what made her think that?"
"Well, you see," I replied, "I came at a very awkward time, didn't I; when you had a lot of other troubles."
My mother laughed, but the next moment looked grave again.
"I did not know you thought about such things," she said; "we must be more together, you and I, Paul, and you shall tell me all you think, because nurse does not quite understand you. It is true what she said about the trouble; it came just at that time. But I could not have done without you. I was very unhappy, and you were sent to comfort me and help me to bear it." I liked this explanation better.
"Then it was lucky, your having me?" I said. Again my mother laughed, and again there followed that graver look upon her childish face.
"Will you remember what I am going to say?" She spoke so earnestly that I, wriggling into a sitting posture, became earnest also.
"I'll try," I answered; "but I ain't got a very good memory, have I?"
"Not very," smiled my mother; "but if you think about it a good deal it will not leave you. When you are a good boy, and later on, when you are a good man, then I am the luckiest little mother in all the world. And every time you fail, that means bad luck for me. You will remember that after I'm gone, when you are a big man, won't you, Paul?"
So, both of us quite serious, I promised; and though I smile now when I remember, seeing before me those two earnest, childish faces, yet I think, however little success it may be I