“Yes?” said Mrs. Sessions wistfully, glancing involuntarily at the door.
Dad peeped at the face of Joseph. He was wishing that he could take charge of things. But in the presence of his formidable son dared he say to Mrs. Sessions all the things he wanted to—things that had rung through his brain in lonely nights of marching and hot noons of battle?
It was Jimmie who solved their shyness.
“Say, gee, if you want to talk, why don’t you g’wan outdoors and do it? I’ll look after father while you’re gone; and do it as well as you can, I guess.”
And Dad, not daring even to glance at Joseph for approval or scorn, offered his arm with slow and stately old-world deference to Mrs. Sessions, and they passed thus together quietly out of the door.
Down by the spring towered a great laurel, which shut off the waves of heat that were dancing their devil-dance across the hot fields. Under it was a weather-grayed wooden bench carved with initials and rude heart-symbols of lovers long since forgotten.
Dad led the little lady to the bench. And she sat there, panting with her recent exertions, but smiling up at him as he stood shyly fingering the hilt of the sword she had given him.
“So you’re a captain—a captain!” she said, looking proudly at his shoulder insignia, shiny and new on the worn blue coat that had served him for strenuous months.
“Yessum—and—I wanted to tell you, time and time, that I owe a lot of it to you. I don’t really care so very much whether I’m captain or general or high private, so long as I’m serving this country of ours; except that perhaps as an officer I’m able to use a certain amount of technical knowledge of military tactics which it has been my hobby to acquire. But whatever I have done has largely, I think, been done because you regarded me as a man—not just as an old man—and gave me this sword as a symbol of your belief.”
Suddenly the old lady pulled out of the tiny pocket of her nurse’s costume a frail lavender-scented handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Reaching up her hand, she squeezed the mighty gnarled hand of Dad.