“Then I must choose you a new name,” he said.
“Yes, Boy, surely; what shall it be?”
“I will call you Mother, because I love you,” he said very slowly. “Then when other children say it, it won’t hurt me so here,” pressing his hands to his throat; “and my real mother away up there will hear and know that I’m not lonely any more, and that will make her glad.”
And the wind blew on through the wild grass, where never a scythe came to end the song!
VII
THE SIMPLE LIFE
AN EPISODE OF JULY
THE MIDSUMMER MOON
When Rodney Kent, known as Billy, and Marjory, his wife, instead of taking a honeymoon abroad, immediately tied themselves down by purchasing a very modest house on the west slope of the Oakland Bluffs, their friends held up their hands and rolled their eyes in astonishment.
It is true that the couple themselves had never entertained a thought of the European trip, but their friends, after seeing the amazing display of wedding gifts, concluded that an expensive and protracted honeymoon would be a fitting way to begin the state of life that living up to the presents indicated. They did not formulate that Marjory was the last of a large family whose parents had always lived quite up to their income in rearing and educating their brood, or that Billy, with a host of friends, naturally hospitable and all doors open to him, was as yet only a confidential clerk in a law firm in spite of the fact that the distinguished chief, himself a bachelor until recently, treated Billy like a younger brother.
The young couple, however, from the beginning had faced facts as they were, for at their respective ages of twenty-four and thirty, they not only had a goodish bit of common sense mingled with their affection, but they had also seen more than one matrimonial shallop, at best equipped only for still water and overloaded with unsought responsibilities, founder pitifully in the cross currents of the social sea.