They bade each other good-bye, and he went away. Yes, he would go back to St. Timothy’s and see them, he said to himself quite distinctly—often and often.
CHAPTER XI
THE FAMILY MIGRATION
The departure from the city that had been their home cost David and Ralph few pangs. To them it meant faring forth gayly into a world of novelty and excitement. They assumed light-heartedly that the friends and places that they were leaving would always be friends and places that they would love and revisit; and on the last morning when they stood with their mother beside their father’s grave they felt that in future years they would often return to this shrine. Mrs. Ives laid a spray of roses against the headstone; her hand rested for a moment gently on the mound of earth. When she stood up the tears were flowing down her cheeks; she caught and pressed the hands of her boys and cried, “Oh, I can’t go! I can’t go!” Then they stood, renewing each of them poignantly the sweetness and the bitterness of their common sorrow, loath to turn from that little, hallowed spot of ground. In the row of cedars that partly screened the graveled driveway below them birds were singing; the fragrance of pine and hemlock, of clipped hedges and mown lawns, of white phlox and candytuft and sweet alyssum were in the air. A squirrel suddenly sprang from a tree and ran away over mounds and headstones.
“Look, mother, look at the squirrel!” cried Ralph.
“Yes, dear, yes.” Mrs. Ives dried her tears. Children could not be expected to be sad for very long. The scamper of that inconsequent bit of furry life, with plumy tail streaming behind, and the eager instant cry of the small boy closed the chapter of wistful meditation; Mrs. Ives turned away from her husband’s grave.
In comparison with that no other parting could be sad. And when at last they were on the train, and the train was pulling out of the city, the mother’s spirits rose like Ralph’s; for at heart she was almost as much a child as he.
“Look, Ralph!” she said. “There’s the academy and the library—and the church. It’s so queer to think we shan’t be seeing them again in a few days. But just think of all that we shall see—the Longfellow house and Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock! The last time I took a long journey like this was on my honeymoon!”
“I was awfully excited the first time I made this trip East,” observed David. “I’ve been over the road so often now that I know it all pretty well. How do you like it, Maggie?” He could not help feeling his dignity as the experienced traveler, but the degree of patronage that he bestowed upon the members of his party was not offensive, even to Ralph.