“She knew when she left my office that it couldn’t be very long. She hasn’t let it shake her grip of herself yet, and she won’t. After all, there comes a time when none of us can hold life for a minute; the one thing we can do, is to make
it as good as we can for the people we live with while we have them.”
And then the old troublesome hate came back savagely. Billy knew that as long as he lived he would have hard memories to fight. When he was alone he waited miserably outside the room wondering how he could go to her, but as usual she understood and called him.
“I just wondered,” she said, “if you would take Jean’s dress to the dressmaker, so she can have it finished in time. I think I’d better not try to sew for a while, and I wouldn’t like her to be disappointed.”
So the days went on without a word of what was to come. Auntie Brown took up her residence in the house. Dan accepted the situation with stoical resignation while he was at home. He couldn’t feel that it was as serious as the rest supposed, but he made an unprecedented attempt at kindness. In spite of his assumed optimism, he had a sinking feeling that something which had contributed indispensably to the background of his life was going to be taken away, and the whole picture would be thrown out of balance. He kept away from home a little more than usual, explaining to his friends in pathetic lapses of despondency that he had to get away to get his mind off things.
But Billy stayed at home constantly. He could always be found within call of the house, and
notwithstanding his young terror of the inevitable, managed to maintain the kindest sort of cheerfulness in his mother’s presence.
Her own fortitude puzzled him. Here and there she dropped many little suggestions for the years to come, but she never spoke of leaving them. Then one day she gave him her philosophy, pointing it out to him on the worn page of a Bible—“If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?”
Billy had never heard the quotation. It struck him as pretty strong thinking, a real man’s philosophy for every day living—something he wouldn’t have expected to find in the Bible. He handed the book back soberly, but without a word; he didn’t know what to say. He was not sufficiently sure of the theories so popular with students making their elementary dip into the sciences, to be irreverent, but the Bible opened for discussion on week days embarrassed him.
His mother watched him anxiously, then taking courage said: