“But in a few years he will go out from me, carrying my own life with him, my heart will go with him, to joy or to death. He will go out into dangers a thousand-fold worse than death,—dangers made respectable and legal,—and I can't help him.
“I his mother, who would die for him any hour—I must stand with my eyes open, but my hands bound, and see him rushing headlong into flames tenfold hotter than fire; see him on the brink of earthly and eternal ruin, and can't reach out my hand to hold him back. My boy! My own! Is it right? Is it just?”
And she got up, and walked the room back and forth, and says,—
“How can I bear the thought of it? How can I live and endure it? And how can I die, and leave the boy?”
And her eyes looked so big and bright, and that spot of red would look so bright on her white cheeks, that I would get skairt. And I'd try to sooth her down, and talk gentle to her. And I says,—
“All things are possible with God, and you must wait and hope.”
But she says, “What will hope do for me when my boy is lost? I want to save him now.”
It did beat all, as I told Josiah, out to one side, to see such hefty principles and emotions in such a little body. Why, she didn't weigh much over 90, if she did any.
And Josiah whispered back, “All women hain't like Cicely.”
And I says in the same low, deep tones, “All men hain't like George Washington! Now get me a pail of water.”