Jane, standing outside the gate-post, shading her eyes with her hand, scanning the village road, caught sight of his sturdy little figure the moment he turned the corner and ran to meet him.
"I got so worried—aren't you late, my son?" she asked, putting her arm about him and kissing him tenderly.
"Yes, it's awful late. I ran all the way from the church when I saw the clock. I didn't know it was past six. Oh, but we've had a bully day, mother! And we've had a fight. Tod and I were pirates, and Scootsy Mulligan tried to—"
Jane stopped the boy's joyous account with a cry of surprise. They were now walking back to Yardley's gate, hugging the stone wall.
"A fight! Oh, my son!"
"Yes, a bully fight; only there were seven of them and only two of us. That warn't fair, but Mr. Fogarty says they always fight like that. I could have licked 'em if they come on one at a time, but they got a plank and crawled up—"
"Crawled up where, my son?" asked Jane in astonishment. All this was an unknown world to her. She had seen the wreck and had known, of course, that the boys were making a playhouse of it, but this latter development was news to her.
"Why, on the pirate ship, where we've got our Bandit's Home. Tod is commodore and I'm first mate. Tod and I did all we could, but they didn't fight fair, and Scootsy called me a 'pick-up' and said I hadn't any mother. I asked Mr. Fogarty what he meant, but he wouldn't tell me. What's a 'pick-up,' dearie?" and he lifted his face to Jane's, his honest blue eyes searching her own.
Jane caught her hand to her side and leaned for a moment against the stone wall. This was the question which for years she had expected him to ask—one to which she had framed a hundred imaginary answers. When as a baby he first began to talk she had determined to tell him she was not his mother, and so get him gradually accustomed to the conditions of his birth. But every day she loved him the more, and every day she had put it off. To-day it was no easier. He was too young, she knew, to take in its full meaning, even if she could muster up the courage to tell him the half she was willing to tell him—that his mother was her friend and on her sick-bed had entrusted her child to her care. She had wanted to wait until he was old enough to understand, so that she should not lose his love when he came to know the truth. There had been, moreover, always this fear—would he love her for shielding his mother, or would he hate Lucy when he came to know? She had once talked it all over with Captain Holt, but she could never muster up the courage to take his advice.
"Tell him," he had urged. "It'll save you a lot o' trouble in the end. That'll let me out and I kin do for him as I want to. You've lived under this cloud long enough—there ain't nobody can live a lie a whole lifetime, Miss Jane. I'll take my share of the disgrace along of my dead boy, and you ain't done nothin', God knows, to be ashamed of. Tell him! It's grease to yer throat halyards and everything'll run smoother afterward. Take my advice, Miss Jane."