daughter-in-law who, five years before, had bobbed to her, wearing a
pinafore, and carrying in a pair of rather large hands a basket of
eggs to her back door. Then she had consented to see the girl, and the
interview in the garden had left her more distressed than ever. (It
was there that the aitch incident had taken place.) And so the
struggle had gone on; Laurie had protested, stormed, sulked, taken
refuge in rhetoric and dignity alternately; and his mother had with
gentle persistence objected, held her peace, argued, and resisted,
conflicting step by step against the inevitable, seeking to reconcile
her son by pathos and her God by petition; and then in an instant,
only four days ago, it seemed that the latter had prevailed; and today
Laurie, in a black suit, rent by sorrow, at this very hour at which
the two ladies sat and talked in the drawing-room, was standing by an
open grave in the village churchyard, seeing the last of his love,
under a pile of blossoms as pink and white as her own complexion,
within four elm-boards with a brass plate upon the cover.

Now, therefore, there was a new situation to face, and Mrs. Baxter was
regarding it with apprehension.

* * * * *

It is true that mothers know sometimes more of their sons than their
sons know of themselves, but there are certain elements of character
that sometimes neither mothers nor sons appreciate. It was one or two
of those elements that Maggie Deronnais, with her hands behind her
head, was now considering. It seemed to her very odd that neither the
boy himself nor Mrs. Baxter in the least seemed to realize the
astonishing selfishness of this very boy's actions.