"Four months. But it'll take all that time to find one in this hole." The first spark of mischief lit the girl's eyes. Mrs. Morrison laughed.
"Go along with you and put on 'I'm Waiting at the Gate.'"
She rolled down her sleeves, lowered the lamp and followed them. She sat on the step that raised the "parlor" from the living-room and leaned back against the door jamb, as if the Axminster rug and plush rockers with which the delightful old room was desecrated, was unfamiliar ground. Mattie put on the record and it began its wailing call for some one to meet some one else at the old gate and not to forget.
The woman in the door closed her eyes. Mattie sat beside the machine, her cheek in her hand, staring at the carpet. They were lost in the sentiment of words and music.
"Pa always liked that terrible," the woman murmured, as the plaint ended in a mournful throb. "Mattie used to play it by the hour fur him."
For a moment something fleeted across her face and Jean saw it in the face of the younger woman, too, hopeless longing, desire without strength to demand.
Was that it, the bond that had held them, pa and ma, and Mattie? Was that why the girl had married and stayed? Would the baby, too, generation after generation, until the stock died out?
As if in answer, a small cry came from the room beyond.
"You kin put 'em on. It's easy. I got to go."
She went out. Jean followed. In the center of a fourpost bed, an atom kicked its flannel-swathed legs and puckered its face for a real howl, if its first warning did not bring immediate attention. But as Mattie lifted it the puckers smoothed, the incipient howl turned into a gurgle.