But the stronger will was fully settled upon going. "I'm a-goin' Father, even if I have to go alone."
She vanished into the back part of the store and began to brush carefully the state gown, the brown silk, made after the quaint fashion of a bygone day. After a few minutes the old man appeared in the door.
"I reckon we'll go, Hannah," he said, with the air of one granting a favour, "but it do seem wrong to leave the little store!"
For many a year the little store had been open on all holidays, as well as weekdays and evenings, for Jack in school and college had needed money, and a startling amount of it. Old John Gardner never complained. Hampered, and made ashamed all his life by his lack of "book larnin'," he had vowed that his son should have "a bang-up eddication, the best they is a-goin'," if he could get it for him.
To-day Jack was to ride in the road race, and imbued with solemn importance Gardner, senior, robed himself for the occasion. They made a queer picture as they stood on the corner waiting for a car. Hannah's brown silk was wrinkled and shabby, but her thin gray hair arranged in tiny puffs around her forehead, looked, as her fond mate said, "right smart." Twenty years ago, when Jack was a little boy in dresses, his father had bought a silk hat to wear to a funeral, and it was this relic of past splendour which now adorned his head.
Once on the car, a new fear presented itself. "Mother," he said, "sposen Jack should see us!"
For an instant her heart stood still. "He won't," she said bravely; "he won't see anything but that new bicycle of his'n and we will come home as soon as it's over."
"I don't know's we'd ought," said the old man doubtfully. "He might not like it."
"Like what?" demanded Hannah sharply.
"Our goin'!"