painter if I do; what is to keep my heart warm when the sun is hid, when
the birds are silent, when difficulty looks a mountain and success a
molehill? What is an artist without love? How is he to bear up against
his disappointments from within, his mortification from without? the
great ideas he has and cannot grasp, and all the forms of ignorance that
sting him, from stupid insensibility down to clever, shallow criticism?"

"Come back to common sense," said the old lady, coldly and grimly.

He looked uneasy. Common sense had often been quoted against him, and
common sense had always proved right.

"Come back to common sense. She shall not be your mistress, and she
cannot bear your name; you must part some day, because you cannot come
together, and now is the best time."

"Not be together? all our lives, all our lives, ay," cried he, rising
into enthusiasm, "hundreds of years to come will we two be together
before men's eyes--I will be an immortal painter, that the world and
time may cherish the features I have loved. I love her, mother," added
he, with a tearful tenderness that ought to have reached a woman's
heart; then flushing, trembling, and inspired, he burst out, "And I wish
I was a sculptor and a poet too, that Christie might live in stone and
verse, as well as colors, and all who love an art might say, 'This woman
cannot die, Charles Gatty loved her.'"

He looked in her face; he could not believe any creature could be
insensible to his love, and persist to rob him of it.

The old woman paused, to let his eloquence evaporate.

The pause chilled him; then gently and slowly, but emphatically, she
spoke to him thus:

"Who has kept you on her small means ever since you were ten years and
seven months old?"

"You should know, mother, dear mother."

"Answer me, Charles."

"My mother."

"Who has pinched herself, in every earthly thing, to make you an
immortal painter, and, above all, a gentleman?"

"My mother."

"Who forgave you the little faults of youth, before you could ask
pardon?"

"My mother! Oh, mother, I ask pardon now for all the trouble I ever gave
the best, the dearest, the tenderest of mothers."

"Who will go home to Newcastle, a broken-hearted woman, with the one
hope gone that has kept her up in poverty and sorrow so many weary
years, if this goes on?"

"Nobody, I hope."

"Yes, Charles; your mother."

"Oh, mother; you have been always my best friend."

"And am this day."

"Do