e. When you release
David's hand he is immediately lost like an arrow from the bow. No
sooner do you cast eyes on him than you are thinking of birds. It is
difficult to believe that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always
seems to have alighted there: and were I to scatter crumbs I opine he
would come and peck. This is not what he set out to be; it is all the
doing of that timid-looking lady who affects to be greatly surprised by
it. He strikes a hundred gallant poses in a day; when he tumbles, which
is often, he comes to the ground like a Greek god; so Mary A---- has
willed it. But how she suffers that he may achieve! I have seen him
climbing a tree while she stood beneath in unutterable anguish; she had
to let him climb, for boys must be brave, but I am sure that, as she
watched him, she fell from every branch.

David admires her prodigiously; he thinks her so good that she will be
able to get him into heaven, however naughty he is. Otherwise he would
trespass less light-heartedly. Perhaps she has discovered this; for, as
I learn from him, she warned him lately that she is not such a dear as
he thinks her.

"I am very sure of it," I replied.

"Is she such a dear as you think her?" he asked me.

"Heaven help her," I said, "if she be not dearer than that."

Heaven help all mothers if they be not really dears, for their boy
will certainly know it in that strange short hour of the day when every
mother stands revealed before her little son. That dread hour ticks
between six and seven; when children go to bed later the revelation has
ceased to come. He is lapt in for the night now and lies quietly there,
madam, with great, mysterious eyes fixed upon his mother. He is summing
up your day. Nothing in the revelations that kept you together and
yet apart in play time can save you now; you two are of no age, no
experience of life separates you; it is the boy's hour, and you have
come up for judgment. "Have I done well to-day, my son?" You have got to
say it, and nothing may you hide from him; he knows all. How like your
voice has grown to his, but more tremulous, and both so solemn, so
unlike the voice of either of you by day.

"You were a little unjust to me to-day about the apple; were you not,
mother?"

Stand there, woman, by the foot of the bed and cross your hands and
answer him.

"Yes, my son, I was. I thought--"

But what you thought will not affect the verdict.

"Was it fair, mother, to say that I cou