“But the books are not yours, dear,” answered the sweet, sad voice from the couch; “they belong to the city.”
The boy stood still a moment while the slow color mounted to his face.
“I know that,” he answered, almost crying; “but just then they seemed to be mine, dear old friends, ready to go anywhere for my good. Anyway, if I was a fairy now, every one of them should turn into something good to eat; bread for me, and pound-cake for mother, and—and——”
“Beef-steak for us all!” said the mother, joining in the conversation.
The boy drew in his breath and smacked his lips, as if the very idea of a warm beef-steak were a delicious morsel to be tasted and lingered over.
“Oh, that! but then one must not be extravagant. Who knows! Eva may come back with a whole pocket full of rocks!” the boy broke forth, after a moment of dull despondency. “Come, mother, cheer up, something good is going to happen. I feel it in my bones.”
Mrs. Laurence arose feebly from her chair, took the boy’s head between her hands and kissed him, with a sort of slow restrained passion, half a dozen times, as if she thought each kiss could be coined into food for his hungry lips.
“Are you so very——”
“Not a bit of it,” cried the lad, shaking his head free, and making a dive at his books, that the poor mother might not see his hard struggle to keep from crying. “Hungry, oh, no! Didn’t one of the big boys give me half his lunch? That’s a roundabout whopper, I know,” he muttered to himself; “but them eyes, I couldn’t stand ’em, and she been sick so long. Capital lunch it was, too: corned beef sandwiches and pickles—famous! So just think of yourself, mother, not me. But here comes Eva. Hurra!”
Sure enough, that moment Eva Laurence came through the little gate, sad, weary, and despondent, moving through the dusky flowers like a spirit of night. She entered the little sitting-room, and going directly up to her mother, kissed her in silence. Then she sat down on an edge of the couch, looked tenderly upon her invalid sister, and whispered to her,