"Yes, honey. What is it? I'm here."
She caught the faint rustling of words. It was as if his hovering soul had been eavesdropping on their thoughts. Perhaps it was merely that he had learned so well in all these years just what each of them would be thinking. For he murmured:
"I've been figuring out—how much the—funeral will cost—you know they're awful expensive—funerals are—of course I wouldn't want anything fancy—but—well—besides—and I've been thinking the children have got to have so many things—I can't afford to—be away from the store any longer. I ain't got time to die! I've had vacation enough! Where's my clothes at?"
They held him back. But not for long. He was the most irritatingly impatient of convalescents. In due course of time the family was redistributed about the face of the earth. Ethelwolf was at preparatory school; Beatrice and Consuelo were acquiring and lending luster at Wellesley and Vassar; Gerald was painting a portrait at Washington; and J. Pennock was like a returned Napoleon in Wall Street.
Pop was at his desk in the store. All his employees had gone home. He was fretfully twiddling a telegram from San Francisco:
Julie's address sublime please telegraph two hundred more love
Mere.
Pop was remembering the words of the address: "Woman has been for ages man's mere beast of burden.... Being a wife has meant being a slave."
Pop could not understand it yet. But he told everybody he met about the first three words of the telegram, and added:
"I got the smartest children that ever was and they owe it all to their mother, every bit."