farewell. Adieu.... We won't pursue the year further, my dear; the rest
is silence and impenetrable gloom, anyhow in this corner of the world,
and doesn't bear thinking about."

Thus did Peter talk to Thomas of an evening, when they sat together after
tea over the fire.

Sometimes he told him news of the world of men. One evening he said to
him, very gently and pitifully, "Dear old man, your mother's dead. For
her sake, one's glad, I suppose. You and I must try to look at it from
her point of view. She's escaped from a poor business. Some day I'll read
you the letter she wrote to you and me as she lay dying; but not yet, for
I never read you sad things, do I? But some day you may be glad to know
that she had thoughts for you at the last. She was sorry she left us,
Thomas; horribly, dreadfully sorry.... I wish she hadn't been. I wish
she could have gone on being happy till the end. It was my fault that she
did it, and it didn't even make her happy. And I suppose it killed her at
the last; or would she anyhow have escaped that way before long? But I
took more care of her than he did.... And now she'll never come back to
us. I've thought sometimes, Thomas, that perhaps she would; that perhaps
she would get tired of him, so tired that she would leave him and come
back to us, and then you'd have had a mother to do for you instead of
only me and the Girl. Poor little Thomas; you'll never have a mother now.
I'm sorry, sorry, sorry about it. Sorry for you, and sorry for her, and
sorry for all of us. It's a pitiful world, Thomas, it seems. I wonder how
you're going to get through it."

Never before had he talked to Thomas like that. He had been used to speak
to him of new-burnisht joys and a world of treasure. But of late Peter
had been conscious of increasing effort in being cheerful before Thomas.