“Guess you’ve seen about the new city government law. Means we’ll have to vote for Mayor again, this fall, instead of a year from now. You figure to run Wint? I guess he’d take it. I guess he’s just getting rightly interested in the job.
“See the session’s likely to end along in May. You figure to come home then?”
Amos read these letters, read Wint’s twice, and smiled at it; then re-read Peter Gergue’s. That night at their hotel he told Agnes that Wint had gone to his own home. “Guess you’d better go back and keep Maria company,” he said.
He half expected her to protest. Agnes seemed to be having a good time in Washington; she was very gay and much abroad. Jack Routt had stopped off for three or four days, during his absence from Hardiston, and she and Jack had been constantly together while he was in town. Also, there had been other amiable young men, before and after Jack. So Amos thought Agnes was enjoying herself, and hesitated to suggest her going home. But he made up his mind, before he spoke, that she should go. Amos never got into an argument unless he intended to win. This habit had established for him a certain reputation for infallibility.
But—Agnes did not protest. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m sick of this stupid old place.”
Amos, head on one side, squinted at her humorously. “Well, there are some stupid things done here, anyways,” he agreed. “When’ll you put out for Hardiston?”
She planned to get some clothes. “I’ll be along in May,” Amos told her. “Guess you and Maria can go it alone till then.”
Agnes was sure they could.
In Hardiston, Wint’s home-going was a nine days’ wonder. People made comments according to their own hearts. Some were glad, some were amused, some were caustic. The only one to whom Wint offered any explanation was old Maria Hale. The old negress loved him like a son; she was sorry to see him go. There were tears in her eyes when she told him so; they ran down her black cheeks, like drops of ink upon that blackness. It is easy to speak openly of simple, human emotions to such folks as old Maria. Wint said to her: “I want to go home to my father and mother. And they want me. I’m going to make it up to them for some of the things I’ve done.” He would not have said as much as that to any other person in the world. But there was no sense of strangeness in saying it to the old colored woman.
She bobbed her withered head, and smiled through her tears, and cried: