"I've got better hands than usual."
"And they have a better overseer."
She let fall the stocking from her left hand and patted the shock of black hair resting on her shoulder. Silence fell between them—the embarrassment that comes from the broaching of a delicate subject.
"It's hard work," he sighed, and her mother-love knew that he did not refer to the management of the farm.
"We all have our dragons to fight, and yours is one of the hardest kind. Ah'm sure he's growing weaker, though."
"But he's still in the ring," groaned Bob, with a comical look, and they laughed in sympathy.
"I ought to have begun on him long years ago for your sake, ma dear, but—it wasn't you!" he blurted out, and hastened to kiss her, lest she be offended.
She could not help just a little sigh.
"It's what happens to most mothers, and we are thankful for the result, and put our vanity into our pocket."
"I don't want you to suppose that I'm such a puppy as to believe that she—you know who—cares for me—that way, you know. But I happened to think one day when—well, never mind what happened—I just thought that while she might never care anyway, she was dead sure not to if I went on being the kind of thing I was."