“What!” said his father, dropping his pen and looking him full in the face.
Mose repeated his question.
“Do you know of any such chance?” asked his father.
“Yes sir.” And then Mose told his whole conversation with Capt. Clark. He waited for his father to reply, but he did not. Mr. Greyson silently reached up for his hat, took his cane and went out. Hesper was so disappointed she could not speak. Mose thrust his old geography into his pocket with a vexed and angry movement.
“There!” said he, “I might have known it would be so! How foolish I was ever to have hoped for anything better! Now all I have to do is to go back to the mill again, and work like a slave till it kills me, which will not take long, and the sooner I die the better.”
He spoke bitterly, for he was sadly disappointed.
“Mose! Mose!” said a gentle voice. He turned and saw that his mother had risen from her pillow, and was resting upon one arm. The striking of the clock awoke her, and she had heard all. Just then, as the light shone upon her face, showing the smooth black hair parted on her white forehead, and her large dark eyes in which there was such tender sadness, she looked very beautiful. Mose went, and kneeling down beside her bed, hid his face in her pillow. She laid her hand gently on his head.
“Don’t be discouraged my poor boy,” said she. “The greater the trouble, the nearer is God, and I know that He will aid you if you do not despair.”
Her low sweet voice and gentle touch, was like oil upon the troubled waves, and though the poor boy’s frame shook with emotions which were hard to control, yet beneath her soothing influence, he at length became calm. When the first bitterness of his disappointment had passed, he raised his face, and kissing his mother’s pale cheek with all that affection which had strengthened and deepened from his childhood, he went back to his reading. It was nearly an hour before their father returned. Mose and Hesper were still sitting by the fire. He did not tell them that he had seen Capt. Clark, but he had been with him all the time.