THE HOMESICK CHILD
It was in the cool of a summer evening that I saw the child leaning over the railing of the river bridge and looking through her tears toward the opposite side of the stream. I knew intuitively that the tears in her eyes were sad ones, because sorrowful tears seem to stand in pools and only gush out at intervals. Tears of joy well out as fast as generated, for the eyelids stiffen under the influence of gladness and eject the tears automatically. In sorrow the eyes seem to recede and the eye-lids grow flabby and helpless, and the tears stand in pools around the corners of the eyes, as though lacking the courage to gush out and part with the aching heart beneath.
“Are you sick, little girl?” I asked. She tried to answer, but the words would not come. She only sobbed, and the pool of tears gushed out under the new disturbance and ran down her pale cheeks. “Don’t talk, if you don’t care to, child, but if you are in trouble I may be able to assist you. Have you a home?”
“Oh yes, sir!” she burst out, as though the word “home” opened the door to her heart. “My home is far out over this river and beyond those hills you see in the west!”
“And why are you here?” I asked kindly.
“Oh, I’m out at service. I’m working in Sheriff Barker’s kitchen, helping the misses with her work. I’m earning my own living, besides giving some money to papa for the other children. There’s so many of us, you see.”
“How old are you?” I asked, not out of curiosity, but out of sympathy.
“Oh, I’m twelve years old! There are four younger than me, and three older. We all go out at ten years and rustle for ourselves.”
“Dear God, what an age! What trials for such little bodies! But what were you crying about when I first came here?” I asked.
“Oh, sir, I was so homesick! I often get that way through the day, and at evening I come out here to the bridge and look out toward the dear old home and cry to see the children, and it really makes me feel better. It takes that heavy feeling out of my heart and I can look away ahead and feel hopeful.”
“What is your father’s name?” I asked.
“Papa’s name is John Deer—I’m Jennie. Mamma calls me Jean, and the boys call me Jen. The Barkers call me Jane. I like to be called Jean, because that’s what mamma calls me. I love my mamma so well, so well! and my heart is aching to see Willie and Bessie and the others tonight!”
“Why, Jean, I know your father well, and I remember your mother. I worked in the lumber woods with your father in 1884. He would write letters to his sweetheart every Sunday, and every Wednesday he would always get one from his girl. How glad he would be after reading her letters. She was a little school teacher in those old days.”
“Go on,” she cried. “Oh, I love to hear you talk of my papa and mamma as they were before they were married! I wonder if they loved each other like the people we read about in the story books?”
“I believe they did, Jean. At least your father loved Carrie Green just as fondly as young men love in story books. I had a best girl, too, in those days, and we often spoke of them, and what we would do after we got married.”
“And did you marry your best girl, too?” she eagerly inquired.
“No, Jean,” I said, and a wave of memory flashed over my mind and I paused to look down through that memory to the vista away off in the distance.
“Did you quarrel?” she asked, her eyes showing how much she was interested.
“No, Jean—she died.”
“You poor man!” she cried. “Did it almost break your heart? Oh, I can feel all you felt when your sweetheart died, for there can be no greater sorrow than to be homesick—to wish so earnestly for the ones you love best on earth—to long for your mother’s breast—that you may lay your aching head down and close your eyes and think only of how dear she is to you. Oh, I’m so glad you told me of your dead sweetheart, for you know how it feels to be sad and sorrowful, and can sympathize with a homesick girl!”