I hurried home with the mouthful, but neighbours had dropped in,
and this was for her ears only, so I drew her to the stair, and
said imperiously,
What can I do to be for ever known,
And make the age to come my own?
It was an odd request for which to draw her from a tea-table, and
she must have been surprised, but I think she did not laugh, and in
after years she would repeat the lines fondly, with a flush on her
soft face. 'That is the kind you would like to be yourself!' we
would say in jest to her, and she would reply almost passionately,
'No, but I would be windy of being his mother.' It is possible
that she could have been his mother had that other son lived, he
might have managed it from sheer love of her, but for my part I can
smile at one of those two figures on the stair now, having long
given up the dream of being for ever known, and seeing myself more
akin to my friend, the tailor, for as he was found at the end on
his board, so I hope shall I be found at my handloom, doing
honestly the work that suits me best. Who should know so well as I
that it is but a handloom compared to the great guns that
reverberate through the age to come? But she who stood with me on
the stair that day was a very simple woman, accustomed all her life
to making the most of small things, and I weaved sufficiently well
to please her, which has been my only steadfast ambition since I
was a little boy.
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