say--"how are you, mother?" I ought to say, "I am not your mother, in
any sense." But what is the use? There they are. I have had children of
my own. I suppose I know them from another woman's children.'

'One would suppose so,' he said.

She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps that she was
talking to him. And she lost her thread.

She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess what she was
looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.

'Are my children all there?' she asked him abruptly.

He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.

'I scarcely know them, except Gerald,' he replied.

'Gerald!' she exclaimed. 'He's the most wanting of them all. You'd
never think it, to look at him now, would you?'

'No,' said Birkin.

The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for
some time.

'Ay,' she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded
profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And
Mrs Crich moved away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces.