But his spirits were not often down in those days. The rooms at the back no longer wore an air of loneliness, and the evenings never hung heavily on his hands. In the course of a few months he sent to Brownsboro for a high chair and tried the experiment of propping his small companion up in it at his side when he ate his supper. It was an experiment which succeeded very well and filled him with triumph. From her place in the kitchen Mornin could hear during every meal the sound of conversation of the most animated description. Tom’s big, kind voice rambling cheerily and replied to by the soft and unformed murmuring of the child. He was never tired of her, never willing to give her up.
“What I might have given to others if they’d cared for it,” was his thought, “I give to her and she knows it.”
It seemed too that she did know it, that from her first gleaming of consciousness she had turned to him as her friend, her protector, and her best beloved. When she heard his footsteps, she turned in Mornin’s arms, or in her cradle, to look for him, and when she saw his face her whole little body yearned towards him.
One afternoon when she was about eight months old, he left her at the usual time. Mornin, who was working, had spread a big red shawl upon the floor and seated her upon it, and when Tom went out of the room, she sat still playing in the quiet way peculiar to her, with the gay fringe. She gave him a long earnest look as he crossed the threshold, a look which he remembered afterwards as having been more thoughtful than usual and which must have represented a large amount of serious speculation mingled with desire.
Tom went into the store, and proceeded to the performance of his usual duty of entertaining his customers. He was in a jovial mood, and, having a larger number of visitors than ordinarily, was kept actively employed in settling the political problems of the day and disposing of all public difficulties.
“What’s most wanted at the head of things,” he proclaimed, “is a man that’s capable of exerting himself (Mis’ Doty, if you choose that calico, Job can cut it off for you!) a man who ain’t afraid of work. (Help yourself, Jim!) Lord! where’d this post-office be if some men had to engineer it—a man who would stand at things and loaf instead of taking right hold. (For Heaven’s sake, Bill, don’t hurry! Jake’ll give you the tea as soon as he’s cut off his wife’s dress!) That’s the kind of men we want in office now—in every kind of office—in every kind of office. If there’s one thing I’ve no use for on God’s green earth, it’s a man with no energy. (Nicholson, just kick that box over here so I can get my feet on it!)”
He was sitting near the door which connected the back part of the establishment with the front, and it was just at this juncture that there fell upon his ear a familiar sound as of something being dragged over the floor. The next moment he felt his foot touched and then pressed upon by some soft unsteady weight.
He looked down with a start and saw first a small round face upturned, its dark eyes tired but rejoicing and faithful, and then a short white dress much soiled and dusted by being dragged over the bare boards of the two storerooms.
His heart gave a leap and all the laughter died out of his face.
“My God, boys!” he said, as he bent down, “she’s followed me! She’s followed me!”