“I read poetry to ’em, Bill, and distributed bouquets of cut flowers. They seemed grateful. So mother is as spry as ever and working her head off because she likes it.”
“Yep, she sure does make me snap out, Dick. And I bet she takes no back talk from you.”
“I’m scared already,” grinned the herculean mariner. “Watch her start a rough house if I track in any snow.”
He strode up the path to the granite doorstep and whisked up the wiry little woman who wore a best black gown and a white apron. Into the house he carried this trifling burden and set her down in a rush-bottomed chair by the fireplace.
“Bless me, Richard,” she cried, “that’s a trick you learned from your father that’s dead and gone! I used to tell him it was dreadful undignified. Of course he didn’t have your heft, but there was no ruggeder man in the village. Do you realize it’s been a whole year since you came home last?”
“Couldn’t break away, mother. A mate has to drive like a nigger when a ship is in port. Has Bill been taking good care of you? Any complaints and I’ll wallop the kid.”
“William is a quick and willing boy,” was the maternal verdict—“not so easy and good-natured as you—more inclined to be fretty when things go wrong.”
“You always called me lazy,” laughed the elder son, “and a nuisance under foot.”
“I dunno as I was far wrong, Richard,” was the severe rejoinder, “but we all have our failings. You have been a generous boy to your widowed mother. My land, you must have sent me ’most all your pay. I’ve been as careful as I could with it, and the account in the savings bank makes me feel real rich. Of course it belongs to you.”
“Forget it,” Richard growled amiably, waving a careless hand of imposing dimensions. “I’ll eat you out of house and home in the next fortnight. What about a whole pie right now?”