He turned, smiled and nodded, then started off. Phœbe stood at the gate and watched the carriage as it went slowly up the steep road by the hill. Her thoughts were with the man who was going home to his mother, going with trailing arbutus in his hands and some great unhappiness in his heart.
"Is it always so?" she thought. "We carry fragrance in our hands, but what in our hearts?" For the time she was once more the old sympathetic, natural Phœbe, eager to help her friend in need, feeling the divine longing to comfort one who was miserable. "Oh, Davie, Davie," she thought as she went into the house, "I wish I could help you."
CHAPTER XXVIII
MOTHER BAB AND HER SON
When David drove over the brow of the hill and down the green lane to the little house he called home he caught sight of his mother in her garden. He whistled. At the sound Mother Bab rose from the soft earth in which she was working and straightened, smiling. She raised a hand to shade her eyes and waited for the coming of her boy, dreaming of a possible separation from him, dreaming long mother-dreams while he took the horse and carriage to the barn.
When he returned he had mustered all his courage and was smiling—he would be a stoic as long as he could, but he knew that his mother would soon discover that all was not well with him.
"Here, mother." He gave her the box of arbutus.
"Then you got some, Davie!" She buried her face in the cool, sweet blossoms. "Oh, how sweet they are! Did you and Phœbe have a good time? Did she enjoy it as much as she always used to enjoy a day in the woods?"
She looked up suddenly from the flowers and caught him unawares. "What is wrong?" she asked with real concern. "Did you and Phœbe fall out?"
