Saturday Night.
The little Salyers, while really fond of one another, have queer ways sometimes of showing it. This afternoon Keats called up wearily from the back yard, where for eight hours he had been carrying water and keeping up fires for the wash-girls, to Hen in the doorway, "What time is it, son?" to receive the affectionate reply, "Time all dogs was dead,—haint you sick?"
To-night, sitting around our lamp, eating peppermint candy, the boys got to talking about their mothers, living or dead,—Keats and Hen of course about Nervesty, Taulbee, Killis and Hosea about their good mothers at home, Geordie and Absalom about theirs who is married again and lives in Virginia, and Philip, Joab, Iry and Jason about theirs who are dead. Nucky alone did not talk,—it seems impossible for him to speak of his mother.
Iry told many little incidents his remarkable memory enables him to recall, though his mother died when he was only three. One is, standing beside her while she fed him beans and sorghum from a spoon; another, having a small paddle and helping her "battle" the clothes as she washed them beside the branch; still another, being left by her in a pen made of rails and a log high up on the mountainside where she was hoeing corn, seeing a beautiful, shining, spotted thing come out on the log to sun itself, and amusing himself poking his finger at the pretty creature to make it lick out its tongue, rattle its tail, and "quile" itself up, till suddenly something fell on the bright head, and his mother, with a terrible scream, threw down her hoe and caught him to her bosom. These and other scraps of recollection the "pure scholar" treasures so tenderly it seems hard indeed that his mother should have taken the "breast-complaint,—some calls it the galloping consumpt'," and died so young, missing his love.
"You know," I said to him, "that being dead isn't really being dead, but just gone out of sight. Your dear mother still lives and loves and watches over you constantly, though you cannot see her."
"I allus heared dead folks was just h'ants, trying to layway and scare folks," said Iry.
"Nothing of the kind," I assured him; "they can never be seen by these eyes of ours, but they are near, quite near us always, to love and protect us, especially mothers their orphan children."
There was a long silence. Then, with a sigh, little Iry exclaimed, slowly, "Dag gone, I wisht somebody'd a-told me that before,—I wouldn't a-been so lonesome!"
Nucky, who had not spoken a word during the conversation, got up and hurried from the room. At bed-time, Hen slipped into my door to report, "I tracked Trojan to the hayloft, and heared him a-laying up there crying fit to kill for his maw."
Poor child,—the still waters run deep!