"No, dear mother, of course I don't. I know you must be right, and I am glad to see you happy."
"Happy! Oh, boy, you don't know how happy I am! I did not think any human being could ever feel so joyful in this erring world, much less me! One cause of this excess of joyful feeling must be from the contrast; else it were dreadful to be so happy."
"Mother, I don't know what you mean," said Traverse uneasily, for he was too young to understand these paradoxes of feeling and thought, and there were moments when he feared for his mother's reason.
"Oh, Traverse, think of it! eighteen long, long years of estrangement, sorrow and dreadful suspense! eighteen long, long, weary years of patience against anger and loving against hatred and hoping against despair! your young mind cannot grasp it! your very life is not so long! I was seventeen then; I am thirty-five now. And after wasting all my young years of womanhood in loving, hoping, longing--lo! the light of life has dawned at last!"
"God save you, mother!" said the boy, fervently, for her wild, unnatural joy continued to augment his anxiety.
"Ah, Traverse, I dare not tell you the secret now, and yet I am always letting it out, because my heart overflows from its fulness. Ah, boy! many, many weary nights have I lain awake from grief; but last night I lay awake from joy! Think of it!"
The boy's only reply to this was a deep sigh. He was becoming seriously alarmed. "I never saw her so excited! I wish she would get calm," was his secret thought. Then, with the design of changing the current of her ideas, he took off his coat and said: "Mother, my pocket is half torn out, and though there's no danger of my losing a great deal out of it, still I'll get you, please, to sew it in while I mend the fence!"
"Sew the pocket! mend the fence! Well!" smiled Mrs. Rocke; "we'll do so if it will amuse you. The mended fence will be a convenience to the next tenant, and the patched coat will do for some poor boy. Ah, Traverse, we must be very good to the poor, in more ways than in giving them what we do not ourselves need, for we shall know what it is to have been poor," she concluded, in more serious tones than she had yet used.
Traverse was glad of this, and went out to his work feeling somewhat better satisfied.