An hour later, as she stood in front of her looking-glass, smoothing her hair till it looked like a yellow skull-cap, she said to herself: “To pay for a person’s railway journey is not indiscriminate charity!” and her eyes grew tender as she thought of the little shoes.
“Yes, child; I sent for you to say good-bye. I am going away for some time.” The woman spoke deliberately in the monotonous voice of one giving a piece of information tedious to give.
Angus did not express any surprise, or regret. The nine years he had spent with his mother had not helped him to know her. Without in the least understanding wherein lay her strange aloofness, he was conscious that he was supremely uninteresting to her. He wondered why it should be so, and his honest boyish soul was sometimes troubled. But children submit readily to the inevitable, and Angus had his compensations.
Vera Warden looked at her son with more interest than was usual with her. He was certainly a handsome lad, tall and well built, with blue eyes that were both kind and honest. She had been long in making her decision. Now that it was made she did not regret: she only wondered if, somehow, she had missed something that more commonplace women find easily.
“Angus, dear, you must take care of father. You and your father are so much alike--understand each other so well--that it will be easy for you. You must be especially good to him, now.”
There was a curious little catch in Vera’s voice as she said the “now.”
“Why are you going, mother?” questioned Angus, feeling that here was something even more puzzling than usual in his mother’s manner. “When are you coming back? Father will miss you.”
“Will he?” asked Vera wistfully. “And you, Angus, will you miss me at all?”
Angus was profoundly astonished. He would like to have kissed his mother just as he kissed dad, but he did not dare. He only grew red, and fidgeted awkwardly, as he answered: “Of course I shall miss you, mother--at meals.”
It was not greed that prompted the child’s definition, but the fact that he seldom saw his mother, except at breakfast and lunch.
Vera Warden did not care for children, and said so--frequently.
The carriage came to the door, good-bye being said without much emotion on either side. As she was driven out of the big stone gates, Vera gave herself a little shake, saying: “And now for life!”