oo, there
was a pleasure which came of memories revived. Let her say to him what
she liked, he loved his mother and was glad to be once more in her
presence.

'I wish I could have pleased you better, mother,' he said. 'What's done
can't be helped. We've trouble to bear together, and it won't be lighter
for angry words.'

The old woman muttered something inaudible and, after feeling her iron
and discovering that it was cold, she put it down before the fire. Her
tongue had eased itself, and she fell again into silent grief.

Mutimer sat listening to the tick of the familiar clock. That and the
smell of the fresh linen made his old life very present to him; there
arose in his heart a longing for the past, it seemed peaceful and fuller
of genuine interests than the life he now led. He remembered how he
used to sit before the kitchen fire reading the books and papers which
stirred his thought to criticism of the order of things; nothing now
absorbed him in the same way. Coming across a sentence that delighted
him, he used to read it aloud to his mother, who perchance was ironing
as now, or sewing, or preparing a meal, and she would find something
to say against it; so that there ensued a vigorous debate between her
old-fashioned ideas and the brand-new theories of the age of education:
Then Alice would come in and make the dispute a subject for sprightly
mockery. Alice was the Princess in those days. He quarrelled with her
often, but only to resume the tone of affectionate banter an hour after.
Alice was now Mrs. Rodman, and had declared that she hated him, that
in her life she would never speak to him again. Would it not have been
better if things had gone the natural course? Alice would no doubt have
married Daniel Dabbs, and would have made him a good wife, if a rather
wilful one. 'Arry would have given trouble, but surely could not have
come to hopeless shame. He, Richard, would have had Emma Vine for his
wife, a true wife, loving him with all her heart, thinking him the best
and cleverest of working men. Adela did not love him; what she thought
of his qualities it was not easy to say. Yes, the old and natural
way was better. He would have had difficulties enough, because of his
opinions, but at least he would have continued truly to represent his
class. He knew very well that he did not represent it now; he belonged
to no class at all; he was a professional agitator, and must remain so
through his life--or till the R