She had a son who was far away at school. I remember very little
about him, only that he was a merry-faced boy who ran like a
squirrel up a tree and shook the cherries into my lap. When he was
thirteen and I was half his age the terrible news came, and I have
been told the face of my mother was awful in its calmness as she
set off to get between Death and her boy. We trooped with her down
the brae to the wooden station, and I think I was envying her the
journey in the mysterious wagons; I know we played around her,
proud of our right to be there, but I do not recall it, I only
speak from hearsay. Her ticket was taken, she had bidden us
goodbye with that fighting face which I cannot see, and then my
father came out of the telegraph-office and said huskily, 'He's
gone!' Then we turned very quietly and went home again up the
little brae. But I speak from hearsay no longer; I knew my mother
for ever now.
That is how she got her soft face and her pathetic ways and her
large charity, and why other mothers ran to her when they had lost
a child. 'Dinna greet, poor Janet,' she would say to them; and
they would answer, 'Ah, Margaret, but you're greeting yoursel.'
Margaret Ogilvy had been her maiden name, and after the Scotch
custom she was still Margaret Ogilvy to her old friends. Margaret
Ogilvy I loved to name her. Often when I was a boy, 'Margaret
Ogilvy, are you there?' I would call up the stair.
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