“I did hear every word,” said my mother, entering from the next room, and looking very white.
“There, there,” cried nurse, “you wicked boy, see what you’ve done.”
“Mother!” I cried, as I ran to her and caught her—poor, little, light, delicate thing that she was—in my arms.
“My boy!” she whispered back, as she clung to me.
“I must go. I will find him. I’m sure he is not dead.”
“And so am I,” she cried, with her eyes lighting up and a couple of red spots appearing in her cheeks. “I could not feel as I do if he were dead.”
Here she broke down and began to sob, while I, with old nurse’s eyes glaring at me, began to feel as if I had done some horribly wicked act, and that nothing was left for me to do but try to soothe her whose heart I seemed to have broken.
“Oh, mother! dear mother,” I whispered, with my lips close to her little pink ear, “I don’t want to give you pain, but I feel as if I must—I must go.”
To my utter astonishment she laid her hands upon my temples, thrust me from her, and gazing passionately in my great sun-browned face she bent forward, kissed me, and said:
“Yes, yes. You’ve grown a great fellow now. Go? Yes, you must go. God will help you, and bring you both safely back.”