“Well, missis, it’s true as you knows him best; but I don’t know as we can take his mother’s word for it. Mothers ain’t always to be trusted to tell what they know,” said the master, good-humouredly. “I’ll speak to you another time, for the gentlemen are coming. Look sharp, lads.”
The tide was coming in--a tide of boys--who immediately flooded the place, pouring up-stairs into the dressing-rooms to change their school garments for boating dress, and gradually occupying the rafts in a moving restless crowd. The woman stood, jostled by the living stream, watching wistfully, while boat after boat shot out into the water,--gigs, with a laughing, restless crew--outriggers, each with a silent inmate, bent on work and practice; for all the school races had yet to be rowed. She stood gazing, with a heart that fluttered wildly, upon all those unknown young faces and animated moving figures. One of them was bound to her by the closest tie that can unite two human creatures; and yet, poor soul, she did not know him, nor had he the slightest clue to find her out--to think of her as anyhow connected with himself. Her heart grew sick as she gazed and gazed, pausing now upon one face, now upon another. There was one of whom she caught a passing glimpse, as he pushed off into the stream in one of the long-winged dragon-fly boats, who excited her most of all. She could not see him clearly, only a glimpse of him between the crowding figures about;--an oval face, with dark clouds of curling hair pushed from his forehead. There came a ringing in her ears, a dimness in her eyes. Women in her class do not faint except at the most tremendous emergencies. If they did, they would probably be set down as intoxicated, and summarily dealt with. She caught at the wooden railing, and held herself upright by it, shutting her eyes to concentrate her strength. And by-and-by the bewildering sick emotion passed; was it him whom she had seen?
After this she crossed the river again in the ferry-boat, though it was a halfpenny each time, and she felt the expenditure to be extravagant, and walked about on the other bank till she found Dick, who naturally adopted the same means of finding her, neither of them thinking of any return “home,”--a place which did not exist in their consciousness. Then they went and bought something in an eating-shop, and brought it out to a quiet corner opposite the “Brocas clump,” and there ate their dinner, with the river flowing at their feet, and the skiffs of “the gentlemen” darting by. It was, or rather looked, a poetic meal, and few people passed in sight without a momentary envy of the humble picnic; but to Dick Brown and his mother there was nothing out of the way in it, and she tied up the fragments for supper in a spotted cotton handkerchief when they had finished. It was natural for them to eat out of doors, as well as to do everything else out of doors. Dick told her of his good luck, how kind Valentine had been, and gave her the half-crown he had received, and an account of all that was to be done for him. “If they don’t mind him, they’re sure to mind the other gentleman,” said devout Dick, who believed in Val’s power with a fervent and unquestioning faith. After a while he went across to the rafts, and hung about there ready for any odd job, and making himself conspicuous in eager anxiety to please the master. His mother remained with the fragments of their meal tied up in the handkerchief, on the same grassy bank where they had dined, watching the boats as they came and went. She did not understand how it was that they all dropped off one by one, and as suddenly reappeared again when the hour for dinner and the hour of “three o’clock school” passed. But she had nothing to do to call her from that musing and silence to which she had become habituated, and remained there the entire afternoon doing nothing but gaze.