Where would be the good of that?
They had written to her often enough about that.
And then she went on to repeat her request.

There was nothing she would not do for them, nothing, if they would but promise to come.
"So be it," replied the elder; "but then, you must make me a promise, mother, in your turn." "It isn't the land ?" she inquired with humble hesitation.

"I should be agreeable to that." "No, God forbid! What you have to promise me is, that if I come to your funeral, you will make such a will that not one acre of the land or one shilling you possess shall ever come to me or mine." "And," said the other promptly, "I make the same promise, on the same condition." Then there was another pause, deeper and more intense than the first.
The old mother's face passed through many changes, always with an air of cogitation and trouble; and the old sons watched her in such a suspense of all movement, that it seemed as if they scarcely breathed.
"You sent your cards in," she said as if with sudden recollection, "to remind me that you'd kept your father's name ?" "Nothing will ever induce either of us to change it," was the answer.
"You're very hard on me, son Dan'el," she said at last; "for you know you was always my favourite son." A touching thing to say to such an old man; but there was no reply.
"And I never took any pride in Peter," she continued, "he was that undutiful; and his grandson's a mere child." Still no reply.
"I was in hopes, if I could get speech of you, I should find you'd got reasonable with age, Dan'el; for God knows you was as innocent of it as the babe unborn." Old Daniel Mortimer sighed deeply.

They had been parted nearly sixty years, but their last words and their first words had been on the same subject; and it was as fresh in the minds of both as if only a few days had intervened between them.

Still it seemed he could find nothing to say, and she, rousing up, cried out passionately,-- "Would you have had me denounce my own flesh and blood ?" "No, madam, no," answered the younger.
She noticed the different appellation instantly, and turning on him, said, with vigour and asperity,-- "And you, Augustus, that I hear is rich, and has settled all your daughters well, and got a son of your own, _you_ might know a parent's feelings.