"Don't go yet," he pleaded, "You've been here such a little while. Oh, please don't go!"
She patted his hand.
"I will come again," she said, and on her way to the door, she kept looking back at him and smiling. He sat motionless until her light footstep was lost in the distance, and all day he sat quiet, scarcely speaking, dreaming of her.
The next day he waited, expecting her, but she did not come; nor the next.
"What's become of Cary?" he asked on the third day of his mother. "Why don't she come any more?"
"I suppose she thinks you're out of danger now, and she may have other things to do."
"If that isn't just the way of women! Coming all the time when a chap don't know anything or anybody, and then just when he needs cheering—" he broke off, pulling viciously at the shawl over his feet.
His mother smiled, knowing better "the way of women."
But two days later, when Cary called again, she spoke to her of his loneliness.
"He gets tired of the home faces," she said, "and he isn't strong enough yet to see the men or strangers. Perhaps if you could read aloud to him now and then——"