“An’ mother knowed,” says Moses, softly. “Ay, Dannie,” he declared, with a proud little grin, “I bet you mother knowed!”
’Twas this exalted ideal of public service, fashioned in the wisdom of the simple by the amazing mother who bore him, that led the fool, as by the hand, from a wilderness of snow and night and bewildered visions, wherein no aspiration of his own shaped itself, to the warm hearth of Twist Tickle and the sleep of a child by night.
Once I watched him stagger, white and bent with weather and labor, from the ice of Ship’s Run, his bag on his back, to the smoking roofs of Twist Tickle, which winter had spread with a snowy blanket and tucked in with anxious hands. ’Twas a bitter day, cold, windy, aswirl with the dust of snow, blinding as a mist. I sat with Judith in the wide, deeply cushioned window-seat of my lib’ry, as my uncle called the comfortable, book-shelved room he had, by advice o’ Sir Harry, provided for my youth. John Cather was not about; and I caressed, I recall, the long, slender fingers of her hand, which unfailingly and without hesitation gave themselves to my touch. She would never deny me that, this maid; ’twas only kisses she would hold me from. She would snuggle close and warmly, when John Cather was not about, but would call her God to witness that 221 kisses were prohibited where happiness would continue.
“’Tis not ’lowed, child,” says she.
Her cheek was so close, so round and soft and delicately tinted, that I touched my lips to it, quite unable to resist.
“I don’t mind that,” says she.
’Twas vastly encouraging.
“’Twas so brotherly,” she added.
“Judy,” I implored, “I’m in need of another o’ that same kind.”