Every night he brought home some small sum, and silently placed it in his mother’s hand; nor, though she urged it, would he retain a penny for himself, or indulge in any of the small luxuries he had in former days enjoyed so much.

“Go buy a wather-million, honey, or get an ice-crame; sure it’s nothin’ at all ye’re atin’,” the fond mother would say:  but Teddy always shook his head, or, if the matter were urged, took his cap and went out, always with the weary step that had become habitual to him, and returned no more until bedtime.

“It’s frettin’ himsilf to his grave the crather is,” said poor Mrs. Ginniss, and tried in many a motherly way to make home pleasant to her boy, and to re-awaken the ambition that seemed quite dead in his heart.  No more reading aloud now, of which he had been so fond; no more recitals of interesting or humorous scenes in office or street; no more wise opinions upon public events:  all the boy’s boyish conceit and self-esteem, germs in a strong character of worthy self—­ respect, seemed crushed out of him.  Patient, humble, silent, one could hardly recognize in this Teddy Ginniss that other Teddy, whose cheery voice, frequent laugh, positive opinions and wishes, and good-humored self-satisfaction, had been the leading features of his modest home.

Poor Mrs. Ginniss longed to be contradicted or instructed or laughed at once more, and fought against her son’s submissive respect as another mother might have done against disobedience or insolence.

“Can’t ye be mad nor yet be merry at nothin’, Teddy?” asked she impatiently one day.

“I’m thinking I’ll never be merry again, mother,” said Teddy sadly, as he left the room.

It was in the afternoon of the same day, that Mrs. Ginniss, sitting at her sewing in melancholy mood enough, heard a little tap at her door, and, opening it, found upon the threshold a lady, elegant in her simple dress of gray, who asked,—­

“Are you Mrs. Ginniss?”

“Yes, ma’am; I’m that same,” said the laundress, staring strangely at the lovely face framed in a shower of feathery golden ringlets, and lighted by large violet eyes as sad as they were sweet.

“Will ye be plazed to walk in, ma’am?” continued she.  “It’s but a poor place for the likes uv yees.”

The lady made no reply, but, gliding into the room, stood for a moment looking about it, and then turning to the Irish woman, who still regarded her in the same awestruck manner, said piteously,—­

“I am her mother!”

“Sure an’ I knowed it the minute I sot eyes on ye; for it’s the same swate face, an’ eyes that’s worse nor cryin, ye’ve got; an’ the same way of a born lady, so quite an’ so grand.  Och! it wor a purty darlint, it wor; an’ it’s me own heart that’s sore for her the day, forbye your’n that’s her borned mother; and, if it wor my own life that ’ud fetch her back to yees”—­

But here the long breath on which Mrs. Ginniss had started came to an end, and with it the impulse of consolation and self-defence that had so far sustained her; and with a wild cry of “Wurra, wurra! och the black day that’s in it!” she sank upon a chair, and buried her head in her apron, sobbing loudly.