“My wife says for you-all to leave that poor woman right up here,” he said. “She can be buried out there by that Pride of India tree beside our little girl, and ma will keep everything looking fine—plant roses, you know, and all that.”
The men didn’t seem to care much about roses.
“Thanks,” said Sisson shortly; “that’ll be all right.”
“How could it be ‘all right’?” Jim wondered. Now that he had stopped talking about the show he could hear that girl again, and it made him feel very, very queer. The lump came back in his throat and things sort of shook before his eyes. He felt as if something in him was going to burst. And just then some one touched him on the shoulder. He looked up and saw his mother standing there. Her face seemed unusually thin and white and her eyes very large, and there was something so kind—so terribly, heart-breakingly kind—in them, that the something in him did burst, and he found himself crying in his mother’s dress.
“I reckon if you feel as sorry as that for the poor girl, you’ll like to do something to help.”
Jim nodded, not being able to speak.
“Well, you get a cup of fresh milk and carry it to my bedroom. I’m going to get the poor child in there and coax her to lie down.”
Jim ran to the spring house—tormented all the while with those sobs in his throat—and filled the tall horn cup with milk. When he carried it into his mother’s room he found the girl lying on the bed, with Ma McBirney bathing her face and talking to her softly.
“I’m unplaiting your hair, dear,” she was saying in a voice so soft that it made Jim think of the pigeons out at the barn, “and I’m going to smooth it. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No’m,” said the girl brokenly.