The
unanswerable question--would Chasuble win?--was always before her. She saw
the slender greyhound creatures as she had seen them at Epsom, through a
sea of heads and hats, and she asked herself if Chasuble was the brown
horse that had galloped in first, or the chestnut that had trotted in
last. She often thought she was going mad--her head seemed like it--a
sensation of splitting like a piece of calico.... She went to see her boy.
Jack was a great tall fellow of fifteen, and had happily lost none of his
affection for his mother, and great sweetness rose up within her. She
looked at his long, straight, yellow-stockinged legs; she settled the
collar of his cloak, and slipped her fingers into his leathern belt as
they walked side by side. He was bare-headed, according to the fashion of
his school, and she kissed the wild, dark curls with which his head was
run over; they were much brighter in colour when he was a little
boy--those days when she slaved seventeen hours a day for his dear life!
But he paid her back tenfold for the hardship she had undergone.
She listened to the excellent report his masters gave of his progress, and
walked through the quadrangles and the corridors with him, thinking of the
sound of his voice as he told her the story of his classes and his
studies. She must live for him; though for herself she had had enough of
life.
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