ABSTRACT
Another year passed on. The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night: and Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep, and think, in her half-dreamy, half-awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side, as she used to do ‘in the days of long ago;’ with a shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child. But Mary rubbed her eyes and sank back on her pillow, awake, and knowing it was a dream; and still, in all her troubles and perplexities, her heart called on her mother for aid, and she thought, ‘If mother had but lived, she would have helped me.’ Forgetting that the woman’s sorrows are far more difficult to mitigate than a child’s, even by the mighty power of a mother’s love; and unconscious of the fact, that she was far superior in sense and spirit to the 30mother she mourned. Aunt Esther was still mysteriously absent, and people had grown weary of wondering, and began to forget. Barton still attended his club, and was an active member of a Trades’ Union; indeed, more frequently than ever, since the time of Mary’s return in the evening was so uncertain; and, as she occasionally, in very busy times, remained all night. His chiefest friend was still George Wilson, although he a had no great sympathy on the questions that agitated Barton’s mind. But b their hearts were bound by old ties to one another, and the remembrance of former things c gave an unspoken charm to their meetings. Our old friend, the cub-like lad, Jem Wilson, had shot up into the powerful, well-made young man, with a sensible face enough; nay, a face that might have been handsome, had it not been here and there marked by the small-pox. He worked with one of the great firms of engineers, who send from out their towns of workshops engines and machinery to the dominions of the Czar and the Sultan. His father and mother were never weary of praising Jem, at all which commendation pretty Mary Barton would toss her head, seeing clearly enough that they wished her to understand what a good husband he would make, and to favour his love, about which he never dared to speak, whatever eyes and looks revealed.
