“They are drooping,” she said regretfully.
“Yes, but they will come up.—Supper is ready.” He had placed an arm under her shoulders and lifted her from her place as easily as if she were a child. They waited a moment while she slipped to her feet, steadying herself a little. Then they moved slowly toward the door, her weight half resting on the arm that guided her. Any one watching them would have seen where the boy had gained his gentle bearing. He leaned a little as they went, his soul absorbed in serving her; and something of the dignity and courage of the slender shoulders seemed to have passed into the heavier ones, as if they, too, bore the burden and the pain with heroic spirit.
To the old man, waiting by the stove, tea-pot in hand, there was nothing heroic in the sight of the two in the doorway. They were simply John and Marcia and they had always walked together like that, almost from the time John could toddle across the floor. Then her hand had rested on the boy’s shoulder and he had looked up, now and then, under the weight, saying, “Does it hurt this way, mother?” Now he did not need to ask. He guided the slight figure, half carrying it, lightly, as if it had been a part of himself.
The old man set the tea-pot on the table and drew out her chair clumsily. “We’ve got lettuce for supper,” he said proudly, “and redishes, and tomorrow night they ’ll be a mess of peas, if nothin’ happens.”
She sank into the chair with a little sigh and a smile of pleasure at the dainty table. The lettuce lifted itself crisply and the radishes glowed pink and white in their dish. A silence fell for a moment on the little group. They had never formed the habit of saying grace; but when the mother was well enough to be in her place, there was a quiet moment before they broke bread.
John looked at her now, a little shade of anxiety in his face. Then he began to talk of the day’s happenings, the old man chiming in with the odd effect of a heavy freight, shacking back and forth through the whirl of traffic. To the boy and his mother talking was a kind of thinking aloud—elliptical flashes, sentences half-finished, nods intercepted and smiles running to quick laughs. To the old man it was a slower process, broken by spaces of silence, chewing and meditating. Now and then he caught at some flying fragment of talk, holding it close—as to near-sighted eyes.
“You wa’n’t thinkin’ of moving to Bay-port?” He asked the question humbly, but with a kind of mild obstinacy that checked the flow of talk.
“That’s what we wanted to ask you, father.”
The boy had raised his voice a little, as if speaking to a person who was a little deaf.
The old man sat down his tea-cup and rubbed his finger thoughtfully along his chin. “I don’t b’lieve I ’d better go,” he said slowly. He shook his head. “I don’t see how I can go nohow.”