Ma got up the second day of her illness, she said it was no more than sweirty, just, she must redd out the kitchen press today. But half-way through she gave a bit groan, Chris caught her as she tottered and turned white, Meg was at hand and lended a hand, they got her to sit in a chair in a minute. Then Chris said It’s back to your bed for you, my woman, and back to it they took her, Ma puffing and panting, God Almighty, lass, don’t look feared about a small thing like this. There’s more old folk than me in their time been ta’en with a bit of a patch, you know. Get out for a bit of fresh air yourself.

Chris went for a walk to fetch the doctor, a thin young country childe with pop eyes, he came in his car and looked at Ma and gave her a prod and listened to her lungs and said what she wanted was quietness and rest and not to excite herself on a thing. But to Chris he said she’d a swollen heart, serious enough, she’d have to look out. Chris asked what she’d better do, then? and the doctor asked were Ma’s relatives near, and Chris remembered about the niece, only she didn’t know where she bade. The doctor said that it couldn’t be helped—try and find out without fearing the old wife.

So Chris waited till Ma was sleeping again and then went and took a bit look through her desk, beside the great curtain, worm-eaten, old, bundles of papers tied in neat pilings, a fair soss of ribbons and cards and circulars, paid bills and bits of tow and old brooches and safety-pins and a ring or so, and some letters fading off at the edges, Chris didn’t read them or heed to them except to peer at the writer’s name. She found no trace of the niece’s address in the pigeon-holes, Ma sleeping as the dead in the bed out under the shadow of the patterned wall. So she opened the lower drawers, old clothes, old papers, a bundle of photos, a little pack tied up in tape which came away in her hands as she looked, she stared at the thing a puzzled minute.

It was the photo of a little lad with Ma’s nose and eyes and promise of her padding, keeking at something the photographer did, no mistaking Ma’s face in his. And below was written ‘James at 2’ and inside the package two other things, tawdry and faded, a hank of bairn’s hair, brown soft, dead and old, it had lost its shine, and a crumpled scrap of ancient crape. Long, long ago it all had happened. Why had Ma never told she’d a son?

And Chris stood with the things in her hand in a dream looking at the faded, puctured face of the little lad who had died, she supposed, when he was no more than a little lad, he’d finished quick with a look round about and gone from Duncairn and gone from Ma, queer that such things should be—all the care and heed and tears of pain that had once been given this little childe far back there in the years where he twiddled his toes. And he’d ceased with it all, a mistake, a journey he would not make, no rain to hear or grow to knowledge of the dark, sad things of life at all, no growing to books and harkening to dreams, like Ewan—no growing to be a queer young man far from Ma and all she had hoped, only leaving her a searing memory awhile and then a quiet glow that lasted forever. Not leaving an unease that washed as a tide through one’s heart, unending … dreaming on Ewan.