leasant service. "Do you want
me any more, please?"

Mrs. Yeobright made no reply.

"What shall I tell mother?" the boy continued.

"Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son."

Before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful glance,
as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsaking her thus. He
gazed into her face in a vague, wondering manner, like that of one
examining some strange old manuscript the key to whose characters
is undiscoverable. He was not so young as to be absolutely without
a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be
free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult
quarters hitherto deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a
position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her
affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond
him to decide. He lowered his eyes and went on without another word.
Before he had gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except
that she was a woman who had sat down to rest.

Mrs. Yeobright's exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh
prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with
long breaks between. The sun had now got far to the west of south and
stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand
in hand, waiting to consume her. With the departure of the boy
all visible animation disappeared from the landscape, though the
intermittent husky notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of
furze were enough to show that amid the prostration of the larger
animal species an unseen insect world was busy in all the fullness of
life.

In two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole
distance from Alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of
shepherd's-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the
perfumed mat it formed there. In front of her a colony of ants had
established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a
never-ending and heavy-laden throng. To look down upon them was like
observing a city street from the top of a tower. She remembered
that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same
spot--doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these
which walked there now. She leant back to obtain more thorough rest,
and the soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her
eyes as the thyme was to her head. While she looked a