buttons? Perhaps I was
not sorry he did not know me. Perhaps I felt it easier to fight my own
shame alone than if it had been confessed and witnessed. At all events,
the sight sent me home sad and depressed, no longer able to take
pleasure in my usual pursuits, and turning from my toys and books with
actual aversion.

Remembering how all mention of my father used to affect my mother long
ago, seeing how painfully his mere name acted upon her, I forbore to
speak of this incident, and buried it in my heart, to think and ruminate
over when alone.

Time went on and on till I wanted but a few months of twelve, and my
lessons were all but dropped, as my mother's mornings were passed
either in letter-writing or in interviews with her lawyer. It was on
the conclusion of one of these councils that Mr. McBride led me into the
garden, and, seating me beside him on a bench, said, "I have something
to say to you, Digby; and I don't know that I 'd venture to say it, if
I had not seen that you are a thoughtful boy, and an affectionate son of
the best mother that ever lived. You are old enough, besides, to have a
right to know something about yourself and your future prospects, and it
is for that I have come out to-day." And with this brief preface he told
me the whole story of my father's and mother's marriage and separation;
and how it came to pass that I had been taken from one to live with the
other; and how the time was now drawing nigh--it wanted but two months
and ten days--when I should be once more under my father's guidance,
and totally removed from the influence of that mother who loved me so
dearly.

"We might fight the matter in the courts, it is true," said he. "There
are circumstances which might weigh with a judge whether he 'd remove
you from a position of safety and advantage to one of danger and
difficulty; but it would be the fight of a weak purse against a strong
one, not to say that it would also be the struggle of a poor mother's
heart against the law of the land; and I have at last persuaded her
it would be wiser and safer not to embitter the relations with your
father,--to submit to the inevitable; and not improbably you may be
permitted to see her from time to time, and, at all events, to write to
her." It took a long time for him to go through what I have so briefly
set down here; for there were many pros and cons, and he omitted none of
them; and while he studiously abstained from applying to my father an