Unobserved, Henry and Emmeline passed down the street. In the back of the wagon, Emmeline could not be seen, and as for Henry—no one looked twice at a Union soldier with a bandaged head. No one noticed them, in fact, until Mr. Bannon, who was sitting on his porch with his pipe, saw them; he lifted his arms with a shout and hurried forward in his lame way to greet them. He shouted some wild sentence at them, but they could not wait to be greeted by lame Mr. Bannon. Hand in hand they went along the house and to the kitchen porch. There, at the open door, they paused.
"Well, mother," said Henry.
Mrs. Willing did not move. She was sitting by the opposite window shelling peas that had been planted, it seemed to her, a generation ago. She sat with a half-opened pod between her fingers and looked at her children. Mrs. Schmidt's brother, driving into town an hour ago from his farm beyond the battlefield, had reported the safety of his sister and her brood, but had brought no news of Emmeline. Mrs. Willing could not at first quite believe that here, in flesh and blood, were the two children who lay so heavily upon her heart.
"Is Bertha safe, mother?" asked Henry. Still Henry and Emmeline did not move, and Mrs. Willing did not rise to meet them.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Willing. "Bertha is asleep upstairs."
"Is—" began Henry, and then he repeated that single meaningless word. "Is—"
Now Emmeline had begun to move. She pursued, however, a strange course. She took a step toward her mother, then a step toward the corner of the room, then a step toward her mother, then another away from her mother. Mrs. Willing rose; the peas and their pods rolled in all directions.
"Mother!" cried Emmeline. "Mother! Mother!"
The first exclamation shocked Mrs. Willing. It was hoarse, and in its sharp tones was all the misery through which Emmeline had lived. The second "Mother!" expressed pure astonishment and nothing else. But in the third was all Emmeline's youth restored.
Henry had seen the object toward which his sister's erratic steps were turned and had finished his sentence, "Is it mine, mother?" He now took his mother into his arms and put his head on her shoulder as if he himself were not a very long way from the cradle in which his son reposed.