“I want you to try them,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I’m sure you’ll like them. They are a special brand the steward at the Union League gets for me.”
This time John consented, and he seemed to feel that the act involved a responsibility to talk, for he said, with an effort at amiability as he struck a match:
“Your wife seems to be looking very well.”
“Yes, Isabel’s health is perfect, and it always benefits her to get out in the country. That’s a kind of Irishism isn’t it? I mean it makes her good health more obvious.”
“Good health is a great thing,” John answered.
The conversation was running emptings again, almost at the start. Albert made a heroic effort to strengthen it.
“Well, this is a regular quakers’ meeting,” he said, briskly. “We see each other so seldom, we are almost strangers when we do meet. I want to be frank with you, come now, and you should be frank with me. You have something on your minds, I can see. Isn’t it something I ought to know?”
Seth spoke again: “Perhaps on the evening of one’s mother’s funeral it isn’t to be expected that even brothers should feel chatty.”
The village journalist felt the injustice of this comment from the youngster.
“No, Seth,” he said, “Don’t snap Albert up in that fashion. I dare say he feels the thing, in his own way, as much as the rest of us. You are right, Albert; there is something, and I’ll tell you plainly what it is. Do you see those poplars over there? In the morning their shadows Come almost to our front door. Father planted them with his own hands. When I was a boy, I used to play over there, and climb up on to the bolls, and pretend I was to build houses there, like in Swiss Family Robinson. Well, that land passed out of our hands so long ago—it’s been an old story for years. Do you see the roof of the red school-house over back of the hill?” turning toward the South. “Or no, the light is too poor now, but you know where it is. When I used to cut ’cross lots to school there, I went the whole way over father’s land. Now, if I wanted to go there, how many people would I trespass on, Seth?”