The young man opened the door, laid down his suitcase, stepped into the little sitting room, and taking down the tattered, faded symbol called out, “What’s this doing here? If that isn’t like Hicksville! The war over two years and–”
Just then the astonished and frightened face of a little, wizened old lady appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Mother!”
Then in another moment he was helping the trembling form to a chair and laughing and stroking the gray hair and putting his arm around that thin, wrinkled neck.
It was almost too much for her. She looked at him with a kind of terror in her poor old eyes, as if she thought he was not real, and she clung to him as if she were drowning.
“It’s all right, Muddy,” he laughed, kissing her and making a fine joke of her bewilderment; “feel of me; here, pinch me. Ouch! See how real I am? I’m hungry too, if anybody should ask you. I think I’ll go up to Ruth Jillett’s house for supper–”
She only clung to him tighter–and cried a little more. “You was always thinking of Ruth first,” she said. “Joey, my eyes is not what they wuz, I’ve seen you so much when I was alone here–in all the trouble–you wouldn’t fool me–Joey?”
For answer she got such a hug as no ghost could ever give. “Of course, if you’d rather believe the Government than your own eyes.... Why here’s Sport! Hello, Sport, I’ll leave it to you,” he added, reaching down and patting the dog whose tail was going like a pendulum. “Here’s a woman that doesn’t–”
“Joey, you mustn’t say that–you–you–”
“All right, old Muddy, then admit that I am me.”