His mother sighed. “Poor Nora, she has had discipline enough of a kind, and hard discipline it has been indeed for you all.”
“Nonsense, Mother, we have had a perfectly fine time together, all of us. God knows if any one has had a hard time it is not the children in this home. I do not like to think of those awful winters, Mother, and of the hard time you had with us all.”
“A hard time!” exclaimed his mother. “I, a hard time, and with you all here beside me, and all so well and strong? What more could I want?” The amazed surprise in her face stirred in her son a quick rush of emotion.
“Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother,” he whispered in her ear. “There is no one like you. Did you ever in all your life seek one thing for yourself, one thing, one little thing? Away back there in Ontario you slaved and slaved and went without things yourself that all the rest of us might get them. Here it has been just the same. Haven't I seen your face and your hands, your poor hands,”—here the boy's voice broke with an indignant passion—“blue with the cold when you could not get furs to protect them? Never, never shall I forget those days.” The boy stopped abruptly, unable to go on.
Quickly the mother drew her son toward her. “Larry, my son, my son, you must never think that a hard time. Did ever a woman have such joy as I? When I think of other mothers and of other children, and then think of you all here, I thank God every day and many times a day that he has given us each other. And, Larry, my son, let me say this, and you will remember it afterwards. You have been a continual joy to me, always, always. You have never given me a moment's anxiety or pain. Remember that. I continually thank God for you. You have made my life very happy.”
The boy put his face down on her lap with his arms tight around her waist. Never in their life together had they been able to open these deep, sacred chambers in their souls to each other's gaze. For some moments he remained thus, then lifting up his face, he kissed her again and again, her forehead, her eyes, her lips. Then rising to his feet, he stood with his usual smile about his lips. “You always beat me. But will you not think this all over again carefully, and we will do what you say? But will you promise, Mother, to think it over again and look at my side of it too?”
“Yes, Larry, I promise,” said his mother. “Now run after the girls, and I shall have tea ready for you.”
As Larry rode down the lane he saw the young German, Ernest Switzer, and his sister riding down the trail and gave them a call. They pulled up and waited.
“Hello, Ernest; whither bound? How are you, Dorothea?”
“Home,” said the young man, “and you?”