At last: "What's a-matter, mother ?" he asked.
She did not hear.
"What's a-matter ?" he persisted.

"Mother, what's a-matter ?" "You know what's the matter," she said irritably, turning away.
The lad--he was sixteen years old--went to bed drearily.

He was cut off and wretched through October, November and December.

His mother tried, but she could not rouse herself.

She could only brood on her dead son; he had been let to die so cruelly.
At last, on December 23, with his five shillings Christmas-box in his pocket, Paul wandered blindly home.