“You ain't thinking of doing anything right away, Tilly?”
“Don't you think it's best done and over with, after we've decided, mother? You have worked so hard all your life I want to give you some ease and peace now.”
“But, Tilly, I love to work; I wouldn't be happy to do nothing, and I'd get so fleshy!”
Tilly only laughed. She did not crave the show of authority. Let her but have her own way, she would never flaunt her victories. She was imperious, but she was not arrogant. For months she had been pondering how to give her mother an easier life; and she set the table for supper, in a filial glow of satisfaction, never dreaming that her mother, in the kitchen, was keeping her head turned from the stove lest she should cry into the fried ham and stewed potatoes. But, at a sudden thought, Jane Louder laid her big spoon down to wipe her eyes.
“Here you are, Jane Louder”—thus she addressed herself—“mourning and grieving to leave your friends and be laid aside for a useless old woman, and jist be taken care of, and you clean forgetting the chance the Lord gives you to help more'n you ever helped in your life! For shame!”
A smile of exaltation, of lofty resolution, erased the worry lines on her face. “Why, it might be to save twenty lives,” said she; but in the very speaking of the words a sharp pain wrenched her heart again, and she caught up the baby from the floor, where he sat in a wall of chairs, and sobbed over him: “Oh, how can I go away when I got to go for good so soon? I want every minnit!”
She never thought of disputing Tilly's wishes. “It's only fair,” said Jane. “She's lived here all these years to please me, and now I ought to be willing to go to please her.”
Neither did she for a moment hope to change Tilly's determination. “She was the settest baby ever was,” thought poor Jane, tossing on her pillow, in the night watches, “and it's grown with every inch of her!”
But in the morning she surprised her daughter. “Tilly,” said she at the breakfast-table, “Tilly, I got something I must do, and I don't want you to oppose me.”
“Good gracious, ma!” said Tilly; “as if I ever opposed you!”