and wilder reconciliations. There were times when, in the heat of
passion, they could have stabbed each other. At all other times they
both--Bridget especially--would have willingly laid down their lives
for one another. Bridget's love for her child lay very deep--deeper
than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she would never have
wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to obtain for her
some situation--as waiting maid--beyond the seas, in that more
cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many of her
happiest years had been spent. She thought, as youth thinks, that
life would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a
small portion of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child
she was. Bridget thought differently, but was too proud ever to show
what she felt. If her child wished to leave her, why--she should go.
But people said Bridget became ten years older in the course of two
months at this time. She took it that Mary wanted to leave her. The
truth was, that Mary wanted for a time to leave the place, and to
seek some change, and would thankfully have taken her mother with
her. Indeed when Madam Starkey had gotten her a situation with some
grand lady abroad, and the time drew near for her to go, it was Mary
who clung to her mother with passionate embrace, and, with floods of
tears, declared that she would never leave her; and it was Bridget,
who at last loosened her arms, and, grave and tearless herself, bade
her keep her word, and go forth into the wide world. Sobbing aloud,
and looking back continually, Mary went away. Bridget was still as
death, scarcely drawing her breath, or closing her stony eyes; till
at last she turned back into her cottage, and heaved a ponderous old
settle against the door. There she sat, motionless, over the gray
ashes of her extinguished fire, deaf to Madam's sweet voice, as she
begged leave to enter and comfort her nurse. Deaf, stony, and
motionless, she sat for more than twenty hours; till, for the third