"You sent your cards in," she said as if with sudden recollection, "to remind me that you'd kept your father's name?"
"Nothing will ever induce either of us to change it," was the answer.
"You're very hard on me, son Dan'el," she said at last; "for you know you was always my favourite son."
A touching thing to say to such an old man; but there was no reply.
"And I never took any pride in Peter," she continued, "he was that undutiful; and his grandson's a mere child."
"I was in hopes, if I could get speech of you, I should find you'd got reasonable with age, Dan'el; for God knows you was as innocent of it as the babe unborn."
Old Daniel Mortimer sighed deeply. They had been parted nearly sixty years, but their last words and their first words had been on the same subject; and it was as fresh in the minds of both as if only a few days had intervened between them. Still it seemed he could find nothing to say, and she, rousing up, cried out passionately,--
"Would you have had me denounce my own flesh and blood?"
She noticed the different appellation instantly, and turning on him, said, with vigour and asperity,--
"And you, Augustus, that I hear is rich, and has settled all your daughters well, and got a son of your own, _you_ might know a parent's feelings. It's ill done of you to encourage Dan'el in his obstinacy."
Then, seeing that her words did not produce the slightest effect, she threw her lace apron over her head, and pressing her wrinkled hands against her face, gave way to silent tears.
"I'm a poor miserable old woman," she presently cried; "and if there's to be nobody but that child and the tenants to follow me to the grave, it'll be the death of me to know it, I'm sure it will."
With an air of indescribable depression, the elder son then repeated the same promise he had given before, and added the same condition.
The younger followed his example, and thereupon humbly taking down the lace from her face, and mechanically smoothing it over her aged knees, she gave the promise required of her, and placed her hand on a prayer-book which was lying on the small table beside her, as if to add emphasis and solemnity to her words.
After she had received the promise she desired from her sons--a promise burdened with so strange a condition--Madam Melcombe seemed to lose all the keenness and energy she had displayed at first.