The days were growing very dark for George Graham. He had not known at first what it meant that black specks should so dance between him and the page he tried to read, that his eyes should ache so much, that all things should seem so strangely dim about him. It would have been better, no doubt, had he stopped work as soon as he felt these symptoms; but how could he? This was his last term at school, and if he passed his examination creditably, especially if he thoroughly mastered the bookkeeping he was trying so hard to conquer, he was to have a place in Deacon Solomon Grant’s store, with wages that would not only take care of himself, but greatly help his mother.
His mother was a widow, and George’s love for her was a sort of passion of devotion. When he could scarcely talk, the first two words he put together were, “Pretty mamma,” and ever since then she had been the first and fairest of created beings to him. He was very fond of Susie Hale, but Susie was only a nice girl,—a dear, sweet, good girl, such as any fellow would like; but his mother was the elect lady to whom were due his love, his care, his uttermost duty.
Mrs. Graham was the kind of woman for a son to be romantic about. She was only seventeen when George was born; and now, when he was sixteen and she was thirty-three, she was, so he thought, more beautiful than ever. She had been a pretty, rather helpless little creature all her life,—one of those women toward whom every man feels the instinct of protection. George’s father had felt it always, and had never allowed care to come near his dainty darling. His one great agony, as he lay dying, was that he must leave her almost unprovided for. That was when George was thirteen, and the boy would never forget how his father had called him to his bedside, and charged him to take care of his mother.
“You are old enough to be her staff, even now,” the dying man had said, clinging to his boy’s hand. “You can be good to her in a thousand ways, save her a thousand cares, and in a few years more you can work for her, and keep her comfortably, as I have done.”
George never forgot this trust for one moment. The plans he made in life were all for his mother’s sake—his future was to be spent in her service. He wanted to come out of school at the time of his father’s death, and try by all manner of little industries to help take care of the household, but his mother was too wise to permit this. She developed a strength of mind and of body for which no one who saw her pink-and-white prettiness,—the prettiness of a girl still, despite all her years of married life,—would have given her credit.
She saw clearly that if her boy’s education stopped at thirteen, he would be held in check all his life by his own ignorance—he must be drudge always, and never master. So she made him go to school three years longer.
How she lived and kept up her refined little home puzzled all lookers-on, and indeed she hardly knew herself. She lived simply; she was busy from morning till night. She sewed for one neighbor, she helped another through some season of sickness, she taught a naughty child who had worn out its welcome at school, but who could not wear out Mrs. Graham’s sweet patience,—and all these things helped. It is true, it was very often hard work to compass the simple necessaries of life, but she struggled on bravely.
When George was sixteen he should come out of school, well trained, she hoped, for a business man, and then things would be so much easier. With this hope in view, she never repined. She kept her strength of soul and her sweetness of temper, her fresh beauty and her fresh heart. She kept, too, her boy’s adoration,—an adoration which was, as I said, the romance of his life.