Mrs. Gray bit her thread. "I don't know what you got against Peter," she said; "I look to like him the best of my son-in-laws, so far."
But that evening, as she sat with her husband beside the old reading-lamp which all the electricity that Sylvia had installed had not caused them to give up, her courage deserted her. Howard, sensing that something was wrong, looked up from "Hoard's Dairyman," which he was eagerly devouring, to see that the Wallacetown Bugle had slipped to her knees, and that she sat staring straight ahead of her, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Why, Mary," he said in amazement—"Mary—"
The old-fashioned New Englander is as unemotional as he is undemonstrative. For a moment Howard, always slow of speech and action, was too nonplussed to know what to do, deeply sorry as he felt for his wife. Then he leaned over and patted her hand—the hand that was scarcely less rough and scarred than his own—with his big calloused one.
"You must stop grieving over Edith," he said gently, "and blaming yourself for what's happened. You've been a wonderful mother—there aren't many like you in the world. Think how well the other seven children are coming along, instead of how the eighth slipped up. Think how blessed we've been never to lose a single one of them by death. Think—"
"I do think, Howard." Mrs. Gray pressed his hand in return, smiling bravely through her tears. "I'm an old fool to give way like this, an' a worse one to let you catch me at it. But it ain't wholly Edith I'm cryin' about. Land, every time I start to curse the devil for Jack Weston, I get interrupted because I have to stop an' thank the Lord for Peter. An' all the angels in heaven together singin' Halleluia led by Gabriel for choir-master, couldn't half express my feelin's for Sylvia! I guess 'twould always be that way if we'd stop to think. Our blessin's is so much thicker than our troubles, that the troubles don't show up no more than a little yellow mustard growin' up in a fine piece of oats—unless we're bound to look at the mustard instead of the oats. As it happens, I wasn't thinkin' of Edith at all at that moment, or really grievin' either. It was just—"
"Yes?" asked Howard.
"This room," said Mrs. Gray, gulping a little, "is about the only one in the house that ain't changed a mite. The others are improved somethin' wonderful, but I'm kinder glad we've kept this just as it was. There's the braided rugs on the floor that I made when you was courtin' me, Howard, an' we used to set out on the doorstep together. An' the fringed tidies over the chairs an' sofa that Eliza give me for a weddin' present—they're faded considerable, but that good red wool never wears out. There's the crayon portraits we had done when we was on our honeymoon, an' the ones of James an' Sally when they was babies. Do you remember how I took it to heart because we couldn't scrape together the money no way to get one of Austin when he come along? He was the prettiest baby we ever had, too, except—except Edith, of course. An' after Austin we didn't even bring up the subject again—we was pretty well occupied wonderin' how we was goin' to feed an' clothe 'em all, let alone havin' pictures of 'em. Then there's the wax flowers on the mantelpiece. I always trembled for fear one of the youngsters would knock 'em off an' break the glass shade to smithereens, but they never did. An' there's your Grandfather Gray's clock. I was a little disappointed at first because it had a brass face, 'stead o' bein' white with scenes on it, like they usually was—an' then it was such a chore, with everything else there was to do, to keep it shinin' like it ought to. But now I think I like it better than the other kind, an' it's tickin' away, same as it has this last hundred years an' more. Do you remember when we began to wind it up, Saturday nights, 'together?—All this is the same, praise be, but—"
"Yes?" asked Howard Gray again.
"For years, evenin's," went on Mrs. Gray, "this room was full of kids. There was generally a baby sleepin'—or refusin', rather loud, to sleep!—in the cradle over in the corner. The older ones was settin' around doin' sums on their slates, or playin' checkers an' cat's-cradle. They quarrelled considerable, an' they was pretty shabby, an' I never had a chance to set down an' read the Bugle quiet-like, after supper, because the mendin'-basket was always waitin' for me, piled right up to the brim. Saturday nights, what a job it was all winter to get enough water het to fill the hat-tub over an' over again, an' fetch in front of the air-tight. Often I was tempted to wash two or three of 'em in the same water, but, as you know, I never done it. Thank goodness, we'd never heard of such a thing as takin' a bath every day then! I don't deny it's a comfort, with all the elegant plumbin' we've got now, not to feel you've got to wait for a certain day to come 'round to take a good soak when you're hot or dirty, but it would have been an awful strain on my conscience an' my back both in them days. I used to think sometimes, 'Oh, how glad I shall be when this pack of unruly youngsters is grown up an' out of the way, an' Howard an' I can have a little peace.' An' now that time's come, an' I set here feelin' lonely, an' thinkin' the old room ain't the same, in spite of the fact, as I said before, that it ain't changed a mite, because we haven't got the whole eight tumblin' 'round under our heels. I know they're doin' well—they're doin' most too well. I'm scared the time's comin' when they'll look down on us, Howard, me especially. Not that they'll mean to—but they're all gettin' so—so different. You had a good education, an' talk right, but I can't even do that. I found an old grammar the other day, an' set down an' tried to learn somethin' out of it, but it warn't no use—I couldn't make head or tail of it. An' then they're all away—an' they're goin' to keep on bein' away. James is South, an' Thomas is at college, an' Molly's studyin' music in Boston, an' before we know it Katherine'll be at college too, an' Edith an' Austin in Europe. That leaves just Ruth an' Sally near us, an' they're both married. I don't begrudge it to 'em one bit. I'm glad an' thankful they're all havin' a better chance than we did. If I could just feel that some day they'd all come back to the Homestead, an' to us—an' come because they wanted to—"