Then they brought her son to her, thinking that the sight of him would thaw her heart.

For a while the child was quiet and subdued, for there was that about his mother's face which awed him.

At last, weary of being still, he swung round on his heel after a fashion that he had, and said: "Cook says that now father is dead I'm master here, and everyone will have to do what I tell them." Barbara lifted her head and looked at him, and something in her fawn-like eyes, a mute reproach, pierced to the boy's heart.

At any rate, he began to whimper and left the room.
There was little in the remark, which was such as a vulgar servant might well make thoughtlessly.

Yet it brought home to Barbara the grim fact of her loss more completely perhaps than anything had done.