Stepping quickly to his side, Brooke said, slowly and distinctly, “Father, Lucy Dean is here, with mother in the library. Lucy Dean—would you like to see her?” Ever since his return to Gilead, Brooke had made a point of calling Adam Lawton “father” very distinctly whenever she entered the room in his waking hours, to accustom him to the sound, also to speak of the ordinary unemotional affairs of every day as a matter of course, regardless of the fact that he did not heed.
As she repeated the words “Lucy Dean” he shook his head slightly, but the word “mother” he repeated quite distinctly several times, smiling as he did so; and then Brooke knew for a certainty that, though motive power and sense of touch and taste and smell were coming back, memory had halted, and that it was the Tatters and mother of his youth that he associated with the words.
Presently Pam came rushing in; she had tracked the footprints of her friend through the snow and had cast herself wildly against the front door, regardless alike of paint or bruises, and scrambled into Lucy’s lap in a very ecstasy. Nor was the Cub far off, and as the two young women, two dogs, and one youth trudged off presently to see the “estate,” as Lucy called it, she caught the boy by the wrist and held his right palm upward as a fortune-teller might, asking what to Brooke seemed strange questions.
“Where did those blisters come from?”
“Please, teacher, I got ’em splitting wood,” whined the Cub, in comic imitation of the drawl of the children at the school below at the cross-roads.
“That dark red stain?”
“Paint, off Silent Stead’s box sleigh—it’s been done over.”
“Who, pray, is Silent Stead?”
The Cub explained with adjectives and details, while Lucy made a mental note of the same, watching Brooke out of the tail of her eye the while.
“Yes, but those dirty brown stains on the thumb and fingers—they are not paint!”