Once more the old lady drew her eyes from the window and fixed them on the circle of eager young faces.
"I suppose young things like you couldn't be expected to understand," she went on, "and yet perhaps you'll be interested more than other folks, 'count of your having met so many young boys."
"Oh, we are interested," they cried in chorus, at which the old woman's face lighted up and she went on with more cheerfulness.
"Well, to begin with," she said, "we lived way at t'other end o' the world. Danestown, it was called, and my husband—better man never breathed—died when my little boy was only four years old. I wasn't so young any more, for Willie was the youngest—the others had all died when they was babies—and Willie's pa and me was getting along in years when he come to us—the dearest, sweetest, prettiest baby you ever set your eyes on.
"Well, we had managed to save some little money, though 'twasn't over much at best, and with me workin' on the farm week days and Sundays, we managed to get along pretty well. An' I was savin' pennies—" Here the old voice trembled and nearly broke, so that it was some minutes before the speaker could go on.
The girls tried hard to think of something to say, but as everything that came to them sounded flat and inappropriate, they kept a sympathetic silence—which was perhaps the best they could have done, after all.
"As I was sayin'," the old voice continued after a while, "I was squeezin' every little penny I could from the bare necessities to lay aside for the boy. You see, it had been his father's wish that Willie should be given the chance neither of us had ever had to get some schoolin' and have his chance in the world. I was hopin' that by the time the boy grew up I might maybe have enough to send him to college.
"Of course," she added, with an air of apologizing for a weakness that went straight to the girls' hearts, "they was only dreams. But I don't see as there was any harm in them, seein's I always kept them to myself an' never told anybody 'bout them—leastways, no one but Willie.
"Sometimes, on a winter night when the snow was fallin' outside an' the wind was howlin' round the house, I used to draw Willie up to the big, open fireplace we had in the kitchen and tell him 'bout his pa an' how he had always wished for Willie to be a fine, big man.
"An' Willie, he'd listen with those big, earnest eyes o' his—such beautiful eyes my Willie had—" Again the voice broke and trailed off into silence while the girls sat and waited as before, only with a stronger pity in their hearts for this faithful little old woman who had loved so well—and lost.