"Then I'll starve," said John in anger, and he threw the wood on the floor and strode away.
"Oh, I don't know about that, father," said a motherly voice, and a motherly face looking out after angry John. "Seems to me I'd have given him some breakfast if he didn't want to come to prayers. Maybe he was ashamed to, he looks so much like a rag-bag."
"Why didn't he say so then!" said the disturbed farmer. "Who expected him to fly off in a passion at the mention of a prayer? He's a hard case, I'm afraid."
That was true enough; and yet the incident was not so much against John as it sounds. Poor John! he was angry at his own heart for remembering, with a certain lingering touch of tenderness, that prayer in the kitchen at home in the Sabbath evening twilight; he wanted no experience that would call it up more plainly. Breakfastless, and supperless last night, John Morgan! There had always been plenty to eat in his father's house. What a bitterness it was to think that, now he was independent, he was actually a dependent on the chance charities of the world!
He tramped on; he was growing hungrier; he felt that he really could not work now until he had a chance to eat; it was actual pauperism this time. A neat-looking house, a neat kitchen door; he knocked at it and asked for a bit of bread. A trim old lady answered it,—
"Yes, to be sure. Come in. And so you're hungry? Poor fellow! It must be hard to be hungry. No home, I suppose?"
John shook his head.
"Poor fellow! You look young too. Is your mother dead, did you say?"
All the while she bustled about, getting a savoury breakfast ready for him—a cup of steaming coffee, and a bit of meat, and generous slices of bread and butter—bread that looked and butter that smelled like his mother's. And this was a farmhouse, and a neat, clean kitchen, and a yellow painted floor.
At that last question a strange feeling came over John Morgan. Was his mother dead? "No," he almost said. He would not have liked to nod his head to that. And yet, here he was among the October days, and it had been early May when he left her. How many funeral processions he had passed on the streets since, and he had had no word from his mother. Down in the pasture meadow one day his father had said to him, "Don't plough that bit up; I've never made up my mind to it. In spite of me, it looks as if it was meant for a kind of family burying-ground." There was a great tree there and a grassy hillside, and a small clear stream purled along very near. How did he know but a grave had been dug on that hillside since he went away? His heart gave a few sudden thuds, and then for a minute almost seemed to stop beating. Could it be possible that John Morgan really loved his mother! He was eating his breakfast now—a good breakfast it was, and the trim old lady talked on.