or simply giving free vent to her own exuberant Irish fun till both
he and she, would sink exhausted into each other's arms, and end
the evening with a long croon, sitting curled up together in a big
armchair in front of the fire. He could see himself as a child of
many crazes, eager for poetry one week, for natural history the
next, now spending all his spare time in strumming, now in drawing,
and now forgetting everything but the delights of tree-climbing and
bird-nesting.

And through it all he had the quiet, memory of his mother's
companionship, he could recall her rueful looks whenever the eager
inaccurate ways, in which he reflected certain ineradicable tendencies
of her own, had lost him a school advantage; he could remember her
exhortations, with the dash in them of humorous self-reproach which
made them so stirring to the child's affection; and he could realize
their old far-off life at Murewell, the joys and the worries of it,
and see her now gossiping with the village folk, now wearing herself
impetuously to death in their service, and now roaming with him
over the Surrey heaths in search of all the dirty delectable things
in which a boy-naturalist delights. And through it all he was
conscious of the same vivid energetic creature, disposing with some
difficulty and _fracas_ of its own excess of nervous life.

To return, however, to this same critical moment of Mowbray's offer.
Robert at the time was a boy of sixteen, doing very well at school,
a favorite both with boys and masters. But as to whether his
development would lead him in the direction of taking Orders, his
mother had not the slightest idea. She was not herself very much
tempted by the prospect. There were recollections connected with
Murewell, and with the long death in life which her husband had