“Yes, I took them off—and after that I kissed them. It was next best. Mary, does it seem very awful quiet here to you?”
“Awful. I never heard anything like it in my life. I’m going to let something drop and make a noise.” She dropped a tin trumpet, but it fell on the thick rug, and they scarcely heard it.
The front gate clicked softly, and the Father came striding up the walk, whistling exaggeratedly. He had ridden down to the corner with the Boy.
“Well, well, well,” he said; “now I shall go to work. I’m going up to my den, girls, and I don’t want to be called away for anything or anybody lower than a President or the minister. This is my first good chance to work for ten years.”
Which showed how old the Boy was. He was rather young to go off alone on a journey, but a neighbor half a mile down the glary white road was going his way, and would take him in charge. The neighbor was lame, and the Boy thought he was going to take charge of the neighbor. It was as well. Nobody had undeceived him.
In a little over half an hour—three-quarters at most—the trail of the Boy was wiped out. Then the Patient Aunt and the Mother sat down peacefully and undisturbed to their sewing. Everything was very spruce and cleared up. The Mother was thinking of that, and of how very, very still it was. She wished the Patient Aunt would begin to sing, or a door would slam somewhere.
“Dear me!” she thought, with a tremulous little smile, “here I am wanting to hear a door slam already! Any one wouldn’t think I’d had a special set of door nerves for years!” She started in to rock briskly. There used to be a board that creaked by the west window. Why didn’t it creak now? The Mother tried to make it.
“Mary,” she cried, suddenly and sharply—“Mary!”
“Mercy! Well, what is it, my dear? Is the house afire, or anything?”
“Why don’t you talk, and not sit there as still as a post? You haven’t said a word for half an hour.”