You gave him your hand. Mother listened, wondering, while Grandfather spoke out bravely to the very end. You had been bad, but he had been worse, he confessed; and he asked to be punished for himself and you.
Mother did not even look at the cracked blue pitcher on the clock-shelf, but her eyes filled, and at the sight of her tears you flung yourself, sobbing, into her arms.
"Oh, Mother, don't whip Grandfather. Just whip me."
"It isn't the blue pitcher I care about," she said. "It's only to think that Grandfather and my little boy were afraid to tell me."
And at this she broke out crying with your wet cheek against her wet cheek, and her warm arms crushing you to her breast. And you cried, and Grandfather blew his nose, and Carlo barked and leaped to lick your face, until by-and-by, when Mother's white handkerchief and Grandfather's red one were quite damp, you and Mother smiled through your tears, and she said it did not matter, and Grandfather patted one of her hands while you kissed the other. And you and Grandfather said you would never be bad again. When you were good, or sick—dear Grandfather! It was not what he said, for only Mother could say the love-words. It was the things he did without saying much at all—the circus he took you to see, the lessons in A B C while he held the book for you in his hand, the sail-boats he whittled for you on rainy days—for Grandfather was a ship-carpenter before he was a grandfather—and the willow whistles he made for you, and the soldier swords. It was Grandfather who fished you from the brook. Grandfather saved you from Farmer Tompkins's cow—the black one which gave no milk. Grandfather snatched you from prowling dogs, and stinging bees, and bad boys and their wiles. That is what grandfathers are for, and so we love them and climb into their laps and beg for sail-boats and tales—and that is their reward.
"THE SAIL-BOATS HE WHITTLED FOR YOU ON RAINY DAYS"
One day—your birthday had just gone by and it was time to think of Thanksgiving—you walked with Grandfather in the fields. Between the stacked corn the yellow pumpkins lay, and they made you think of Thanksgiving pies. The leaves, red and gold, dropped of old age in the autumn stillness, and you gathered an armful for Mother.
"Why don't all the people die every year, Grandfather, like the leaves?"
"Everybody dies when his work's done, little boy. The leaf's work is done in the fall when the frost comes. It takes longer for a man to do his work, 'cause a man has more to do."