THE FATTED CALF
Abe had no such qualms as Samuel. He wanted to see Angy that minute, and he did not care if she did know why he had returned.
He fairly ran to the back door under the grape arbor, so that Samuel, observing his gait, was seized with a fear that he might be that young Abe of the Beach, during his visit, after all.
Abraham rushed into the kitchen without stopping to knock. "I'm back,
Mother," he cried, as if that were all the joyful explanation needed.
She was struggling with the strings of her bonnet before the looking-glass which adorned Blossy's parlor-kitchen. She turned to him with a little cry, and he saw that her face had changed marvelously—grown young, grown glad, grown soft and fresh with a new excited spirit of jubilant thanksgiving.
"Oh, Father! Weren't yew s'prised tew git the telephone? I knowed yew'd come a-flyin' back."
Blossy appeared from the room beyond, and slipped past them, knowing intuitively where she would find her lord and master; but neither of them observed her entrance or her exit.
Angy clung to Abe, and Abe held her close. What had happened to her, the undemonstrative old wife? What made her so happy, and yet tremble so? Why did she cry, wetting his cheek with her tears, when she was so palpably glad? Why had she telephoned for him, unless she, too, had missed him as he had missed her?
Recalling his memories of last night, the memories of that long-ago honeymoon-time, he murmured into his gray beard, "Dearest!"
She did not seem to think he was growing childish. She was not even surprised. At last she said, half between sobbing and laughing: