n she strangled a laugh in her throat--a laugh, sitting in Freddy's
chair! What--what must Freddy's mother think of her!

"Oh, certainly!" Mrs Jones concurred. The large dark eyes, the only
handsome feature she possessed, scanned with a fleeting gaze of inquiry
the other woman's face. "I daresay, after your walk----"

"If you don't mind. Yes. Quite so. Tea is so very refreshing, don't you
think?"

The temptation to say it was the cup which cheered but did not
inebriate crossed her mind, but was combated.

The bread-and-butter handed to her with her tea was thick, the tea had
not been creamed; but if food and drink had been fit for the
entertainment of the gods, she did not think she could have swallowed.
She lifted the bread-and-butter to her lips, then laid it, untasted,
down again, she stirred her tea, and glanced at the clock upon the
mantelpiece. For how long must she sit and talk inanities with this
mother whose only child was lying fathoms deep beneath the sea? She had
been there barely a quarter of an hour. For an hour and three-quarters,
at least, she must sit there still, whatever the other woman thought of
her, however she tried to rid herself of her company.

"You, too, have a son, I believe?" Mrs Jones was saying.

"Yes." She had an only son. His name was Connell. He was six years old.

"And very dear to you, I know!" The eyes of the woman whose only son
was drowned shone with sympathy. They were speaking eyes, really
beautiful with that light in them.

"Very dear to me," responded the woman in Freddy's chair. To her eyes
came a sudden, unexpected rush of tears. Of her own child she felt she
could not speak to this unconsciously bereaved mother.

"And six years old? Ah! Now I must show you what my dear boy was like
at six."

She got up, and fetched from the mantelpiece a photograph of a tiny boy
in a sailor's dress; a plain-featured, ordinary-looking little boy,
with dark eyes too solemn for his age.

"Now, is your boy as big, do you think? We considered Freddy a fine
boy. And whom do you think he takes after?"

"He is like you--about the eyes," Mrs Macmichel said. She gave the
photograph hurriedly back. She could not endure to look upon the eyes
closed now upon their "first dark day of nothingness."

Mrs Jones put the portrait tenderly in its place. "That big photograph
standing above the clock was taken only the other day," she said. "When
he was appointed to the _Doughty_, I wished so much