"No, not with Muffy," Harvey assured her. "They're awful rich over there," he volunteered, pointing to the large stone house in the distance.
"It must be lovely," mused the girl. "We could have such lots of lovely things. Why don't you eat your dinner, Harvey?—it'll get so cold."
"I don't want it much," replied her brother. "You see, I had a pretty good breakfast," he explained cheerfully.
The loving eyes, still moist, gazed into his own. She was so young, some years younger than he, and as inexperienced almost as a child could be; yet the stern tuition of poverty and sorrow had given something of vision to the eyes that looked so wistfully out upon the plaintive face before her. She noted his shabby dress, the patches on his knees, the boots that stood so sorely in need of impossible repairs, the grimy stains of toil from head to foot, the furrowed channels that the flowing perspiration had left upon his face. And a great and mysterious pity seemed to possess her. She felt, dimly enough, yet with the sad reality of truth, that her brother had hardly had a chance in life's unequal struggle. His tenderness, his unselfishness, his courage, all these she recognized, though she could not have called them by their names. She knew how ardently he longed to do so much that chill penury forbade; and as she glanced at the dust-covered pile in the distance that his toil had gathered, then back at the tired figure on the grass, all stained and spotted, the food he so much needed untasted in his sorrow, she felt more and more that there was only one hero in the world, however baffled and unrecognized he might be.
"Mother'll be so disappointed," the girl pleaded, "if you don't eat it, Harvey; she tried so hard to make it nice. Besides, I'll just have to carry it back," she suddenly urged, a note of triumphant expectation in her voice; "and it was real heavy, too," well pleased with the culminating argument.
The boy hesitated, then slowly raised the tempting morsel to his lips. "I didn't have such an awful lot of breakfast," he conceded; "I really am pretty hungry—and it was so good of you to fetch it to me, sister," his gaze resting affectionately on her.
A long silence ensued, Jessie watching delightedly as the little repast was disposed of, entertaining her brother the while with a constant stream of talk, all fed from the fountain-head of their own little circle, their own humble and struggling life. But however far afield her speech, with her thought, might wander, it kept constantly returning to the one central figure of their lonely lives, to her from whom their own lives had sprung; and the most unobservant listener would soon have known that the unselfish tenderness, the loving courage, of the mother-heart that had warmed and sheltered their defenseless lives, was reaping now its great and rich reward.
Jessie had reverted again to the dark shadow that overhung them both, their mother's failing eyesight; and two earnest little faces looked very soberly one into the other, as though they must together beat back the enemy from the gate.
Suddenly Harvey broke the silence. "I'm pretty sure she's going to get well," he said earnestly, holding the bottle in one hand and the glass stopper in the other. "I had a dream last night that—that comforted me a lot," he went on, slightly embarrassed by the fanciful nature of his argument; he could see that Jessie had hoped for something better. "I dreamed I was walking some place on a country road. And it was all dark—for mother, at least—it was awful dark, and I was leading her by the hand. I thought there was something troubling her that you didn't know about—nor me—nobody, only mother. Well, just when we were groping round in the dark, a great big black cloud broke up into little bits, and the sun came out beautiful—just like—like it is now," he described, glancing towards the orb above them. "Of course, that was only in my dream—but we went straight on after that and mother could see to walk just as well as me," he concluded, smiling as hopefully as if dreams were the only realities of life.
Jessie, holding her sunbonnet by both strings and swinging it gently to and fro, had a curious look of interest, not unmixed with doubt, upon her childish face. "That was real nice, Harvey," she said slowly at length, "but I don't just understand. You see, people always dream their dreams at night—and the sun couldn't come out at night; anyhow it never does."