He said “no” to that, however, speaking with the same air of determination which sat so strangely upon him. It might be Mattie who, in the long run, had brought about the present position, but dignity demanded that at least he should hand in his own notice.
“I’d best see to it myself,” he told her, getting up from the table. “Mind and give it me before I go.”
“Likely I’d forget to give it you, isn’t it?” she laughed; and then, still laughing, shivered.... “It fair gives me the creeps to think how, if that letter never went, things’d be just the same as before!”
“They wouldn’t be quite the same, no matter what happened. Folks pass on, somehow. Even trying to do things makes a difference.”
“A deal o’ difference it’d make to me, I’m sure,” Mattie answered him cynically, “if I found myself still landed in this one-eyed spot!... Ay, well, I won’t go fretting about things, just when they’re shaping so nicely,” she corrected herself quickly. “Anyway, I’m glad you’ve seen your way to facing the job at last.”
There was a hint of interrogation in her tone as to how he had arrived at his decision, together with another and fainter one as to how he was taking it. Standing, he looked away from her through the window while he answered her unspoken questions.
“It just came over me, as it were, that I might never see the lads again if I didn’t do something about it. You go on thinking there’s time enough and to spare, and then all of a sudden there comes a day when you think there’s no time. That was how it was, yesterday. I just sort of felt I’d be rare and glad to see ’em all again.”
The tears came into Mattie’s eyes.
“You’ll never know how glad till you do see ’em!” she said, with a break in her voice. “There’s nothing like your own flesh and blood, when all’s said and done. And there’s the grandchildren an’ all.”
“Ay, and the garden....” He turned to her then, smiling a little shyly, a little shamefacedly. “I’ve never let on to you about it, Mattie, but I’ve been fair wild to see that garden!”