Poor Eliphalet tried to say something as he shook the young man's hand, but he broke down and wept like a child. The boy could not realise what a deal of sunshine he was taking out of the old man's life.
"I 'll write to you as soon as I am settled," he told them, and with a husky fare
well hurried away from the painful scene. At the gate the old couple stood and watched him go swinging down the street towards the station. Then they went into the house, and sat long in silence in the room he had so lately left. The breakfast-table, with all that was on it, was left standing unnoticed and neglected, a thing unprecedented in Mrs. Hodges' orderly household.
Finally her husband broke the silence. "It 'pears as if we had jest buried some one and come home from the funeral."
"An' that 's jest what we have done, ef we only knowed it, 'Liphalet. We 've buried the last of the Fred Brent we knowed an' raised. Even ef we ever see him ag'in, he 'll never be the same to us. He 'll have new friends to think of an' new notions in his head."
"Don't say that, Hester; don't say that. I can't stand it. He is never goin' to furgit you an' me, an' it hurts me to hear you talk like that."
"It don't soun' none too pleasant fur me, 'Liphalet, but I 've learned to face the truth, an' that 's the truth ef it ever was told."
"Well, mebbe it 's fur the best, then. It 'll draw us closer together and make us
more to each other as we journey down to the end. It 's our evenin', Hester, an' we must expect some chilly winds 'long towards night, but I guess He knows best." He reached over and took his wife's hand tenderly in his, and so they sat on sadly, but gathering peace in the silence and the sympathy, until far into the morning.
Meanwhile the eight-fifty "flier" was speeding through the beautiful Ohio Valley, bearing the young minister away from the town of his birth. Out of sight of the grief of his friends, he had regained all his usual stolid self-possession, though his mind often went back to the little cottage at Dexter where the two old people sat, and he may be forgiven if his memory lingered longer over the image of the man than of the woman. He remembered with a thrill at his heart what Eliphalet Hodges had been to him in the dark days of his youth, and he confessed to himself with a half shame that his greatest regret was in leaving him.