The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with her brother in California.
“I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu,” she explained, “and James has been wanting me this long time. I don't want to leave you, that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different.”
He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He no more suspected her of design than of crime.
“Of course you are going,” he said, heartily. “It's the very thing. But I like the way you desert your little son!”
“I've been thinking about that, too,” she said, pouring his coffee. “I—if you were in the city, now, there would always be something to do.”
He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence of guile.
“What would I do in the city?”
“They use chemists in the mills, don't they?”
“A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job,” he scoffed. “No city for me, mother.”
But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pause of the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened. He would go.