The husband may desert the wife, but the son is
sure to desert his mother--must, for nature demands the desertion. Put
not your trust in princes--and yet put it rather in princes, oh, fond
and doting parents, than in the blue-eyed flower of childhood for which
year after year, with labours infinite, you would buy all the sunshine
of the world.
Henry's pang at leaving home was mainly the pang of parting with his
mother. It seemed more than a mere physical parting. It was his
childhood that was parting from her for ever. When he came to see them
he would be something different,--a man, an independent being. As long
ago physically, now spiritually, the umbilical cord had been cut.
With Esther and Dot and Mat the parting was hardly a parting, as it was
rather a promise of their all meeting together some day in a new place
of freedom, which there was a sense of his going out to prepare for
them. Their way would be his way, as the mother's could not; for theirs
was the highway of youth, which, sooner or later, they would all take
together, singing in the morning sun.
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