"What do you cry for?" he exclaimed at last, impatiently; "aren't you glad to send for Roger, and have him at home? I shouldn't wonder if he'd join the Edgehill Cricket-club, and get to be captain of the eleven--wouldn't it be famous. And I mean to get strong, _I_ can tell you, mamma. I don't mean to live in this stifle and coddle, now I've come into my fortune; for papa said it was all for me."
"Oh, Edmund, dear child, your father was so fond of you!" cried the poor mother; "have you no thought to spare for him, now that he is gone? He loved you more than everything in the world. I wish--I wish you would think more of him than of what he leaves behind."
Little Edmund looked up keenly at the weak, weeping, timid woman.
"Were you fond of him yourself?" said the child, half suspiciously; "now you love him and cry about him; but it is different with me. He was very good to me, was papa," continued the little man, with a reluctant tear in the corner of his eye; "but all of you say he's a deal better off now, and that we'll see him again. If that's true, why do you cry?--and besides, mamma, I used always to think that you liked Roger's father best."
Mrs. Stenhouse covered her face with her hands, and only cried the more; she was vexed, humiliated, and ashamed, as well as full of grief. It seemed somehow sacrilege to speak of Roger's father to the son of her second husband; and Roger's father was little to herself now but a bright, brief dream of her girlhood, too short, too happy to influence her life. Now the second, longer, harder, more serious portion of her existence had concluded also; but while she sat crying these tears of mortification and wounded feeling, some one beckoned her to the door of the room and gave her some letters. One of these was from Roger himself, announcing his arrival, and that he had gone to Milnehill; for Roger as yet did not know what had happened in his mother's house. This surprising announcement raised her out of her distress in a moment and dried her tears. A thrill of new freedom ran warm through her heart, stirring the blood in her dull veins. Roger, her first-born, whom she had not seen since he was almost a baby--whom Mr. Stenhouse smilingly disliked, and would not permit to come there--Roger, her brave soldier, her handsome boy! Now she could have him under her own roof, without asking anybody's permission; now she could enjoy her son's society in fullest freedom. Poor soul! it gave her a compunction to feel how glad she was; but she could not deny even to herself how exquisite for the first moment was that unaccustomed delight.