“I was out there one time, five years ago, and didn’t seem to like it then. But since I’ve stood off and thought it over, it seems to me that’s a better place for me than here, with my old friends goin’ or gone, and things changin’ this a-way. Out there around them hop and fruit ranches they have great times at night in the camps, and a man of my build can keep busy playin’ for dances. I done it before, and they took to me, right along.”
“They do everywheres, Banjo.”
“Some don’t,” he sighed, watching out of the window in the direction that Nola must come.
“She’s not likely to come back before morning—I 318 think she aims to go to the post tonight and stay with Frances,” she said, reading his heart in his face.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” said Banjo.
“I guess everything that comes to us is for the best, if we knew how to take it,” she said. “Well, you set there and be comfortable, and I’ll stir Maggie up and have her make you something nice for dinner. After that I want you to play me the old songs over before you go. Just to think I’ll never hear them songs no more breaks my heart, Banjo—plumb breaks my heart!”
As she passed Banjo she laid her hand on his head in a manner of benediction, and tears were in her eyes.
The sun was out again when they had finished lunch, coaxing autumn on into November at the peril of frosted toes. Mrs. Chadron had brightened considerably, also. Even bereavement and sorrow could not shake her fealty to chili, and now it was rewarding her by a rubbing of her old color in her face as she sat by the window and waited for Banjo to tune his instruments for the parting songs.
Her workbasket was beside her, the bright knitting-needles in the unfinished sock. It never would be completed now, she knew, but she kept it by her to cry over in the twilight hours, when thoughts of Saul came over her with their deep-harrowing pangs.
Banjo sang the touching old ballads over to her appreciative ear, watching the shadows outside, as he played, for three o’clock. That was the hour set for 319 him to go. “Silver Threads” was saved for the end, and when its last strain died Mrs. Chadron’s face was hidden in her hands. She was rocking gently, her handkerchief fallen to the floor.