Tom's speech was a queer mixture of good English acquired from his sisters, who had been drilled by northern teachers, and colloquial speech picked up from his surroundings.
"It does seem too bad," Hertha declared, "to leave just now when Mr. Merryvale has come back and you can have work with some pay."
"I ain't going for more'n a year," Tom declared.
"You'll be grown up by that time."
"I'm as tall as you now."
Hertha looked across the water into the deep, velvet sky, and thought of the long days in which she would have to go about her work without her baby. Tom was seven years younger than she and since his birth had been her special charge. Hundreds of times she had washed his face and his soft little brown hands to which the grubby earth was as dear as to the roots of a flower. She it was who had always shielded him from severity, finding many and ingenious excuses for him. He had grown up a quiet, serious boy of a meditative cast, and sometimes came out with unusual, even startling remarks. Tom's "thinking" was one of the jokes of the family. Hertha found it hard to imagine life without him.
"Do you remember," she said after they had sat silent for a time; "once I struck you?"
"Naw!"
"Of course you don't remember, you weren't more than three. We were out visiting at Aunt Mary's and I had dressed you for the afternoon. We were on the steps. I had some sewing and you slipped away and went off berrying. Oh, but weren't you a sight when you came back!"
Tom grunted.