Mrs. Welsh stopped the lullaby she had been humming, and sat quietly waiting.
“Just as y’ please,” said Jack, but the boy knew he would be glad to hear the story.
“It’s not a very long one,” said Allan, his lips trembling, “nor an unusual one, for that matter. Father was a carpenter, and we lived in a little home just out of Cincinnati—he and mother and I. We were very happy, and I went to school every day, while father went in to the city to his work. But one day I was called from school, and when I got home I found that father had fallen from a scaffolding he had been working on, and was so badly injured that he had been taken to a hospital. We thought for a long time that he would die, but he got better slowly, and at last we were able to take him home. But he was never able to work any more,—his spine had been injured so that he could scarcely move himself,—and our little savings grew smaller and smaller.”
Allan stopped, and looked off across the yards, gripping his hands together to preserve his self-control.
“Father worried about it,” he went on, at last; “worried so much that he grew worse and worse, until—until—he brought on a fever. He hadn’t any strength to fight with. He just sank under it, and died. I was fifteen years old then—but boys don’t understand at the time how hard things are. After he was gone—well, it seems now, looking back, that I could have done something more to help than I did.”
“There, now, don’t be a-blamin’ yerself,” said Jack, consolingly.
The little woman in the rocking-chair leaned over and touched his arm softly, caressingly.
“No; don’t be blamin’ yerself,” she said. “I know y’ did th’ best y’ could. They ain’t so very much a boy kin do, when it’s money that’s needed.”
“No,” and Allan drew a deep breath; “nor a woman, either. Though it wasn’t only that; I’d have worked on; I wouldn’t have given up—but—but—”
“Yes,” said Mary, understanding with quick, unfailing sympathy; “it was th’ mother.”