CHAPTER III
HETTY HAS HER DAY
WINT and his father walked home in a silence that was little broken. Across the railroad yards, up the hill. A new understanding of his father and mother was coming to Wint; some measure of comprehension of the completeness of their love for him. He marked that there had been no reproaches from his father, no questions, no scolding. That which had passed was to be forgotten, was to be ignored. He was their son; nothing else mattered in any degree. His father, on their homeward way, spoke of other matters, once or twice. He said the day was fine; he said Mrs. Chase would probably have breakfast waiting. Wint took the older man’s lead, ignored what had passed the night before.
When they got to the house, his mother met him in the hall, and she put her arms around him and cried on his shoulder, and called him her boy. Wint cried, too, and was not ashamed of it. He kept patting her head, and saying: “There, mother,” in an awkward way. She told him he must never go away from home again. Never; for anything....
He said: “I thought you would want me to go.”
But she clasped him close, protesting.
She had breakfast hot upon the stove. The elder Chase had gone downtown as soon as it was day, to try to locate Wint. They ate together; and after that first moment in the hall, they did not speak of what had happened at all. When breakfast was done, Wint went into the kitchen with his mother to help with the dishes. She tied an apron around him, and laughed at him with a sob in her voice; and Wint laughed with her, and joked her, till the sob disappeared. His father looked in on them once or twice, then left them alone together.
Once, Wint broke a little silence by saying, his arm around her shoulders:
“Mother!”
She looked up at him with quick anxiety; and he said: “I’m sorry, for your sakes.”