"And Lizbeth?"
"Oh, Lizbeth wishes she was Mother."
"And how about Mother? Does she wish she were somebody else, do you think?"
"Oh no, Father, she doesn't, 'cause then she wouldn't have me and Lizbeth. Besides, she don't have time to just sit and look, Mother don't."
Your eyes were big and shining. Father just looked and looked a long time.
"And what do you think now, Father?"
"I was thinking of Mother waiting for you and Lizbeth and Father, and wondering why we don't come home."
And almost always after that, when you went out walking with Father, Sundays, Mother went with you. It seemed strange at first, but fine, to have her sit with you on the river-bank and just look and look and look, smiling but never saying a word; and though you asked her many times what she thought about as she sat there dreaming, she was never once caught wishing that she were anybody but her own self. She was happy, she told you; but while it was you she told, she would be looking at Father.
Oh, it was golden in the morning glow, when you were a little boy. But clouds skurried across the sky—black clouds, storm clouds—casting their chill and shadow for a while over all Our Yard, darkening Our House, so that a little boy playing on the hearth-rug left his toy soldier prostrate there to wander, wondering, from room to room.
"Mother, why doesn't Father play with us like he used to?"