"I won't suppose any such thing. Thank God there's been no stain on any of our family, either side; just plain hard-workin' folks—no crazy ones, no criminals."
"But supposing it was our boy, Paw?"
"Oh, what's the use of arguin' with a woman! I love you for it, Maw, but—well, I'm sorry I spoke."
He returned to his paper, growling now and then as he read of some new quibble devised by the attorneys for the defense. As softly and as surreptitiously as it begins to rain on a cloudy day, she was crying. He turned again with mock indignation.
"Here, here! What you turning up about now?"
"I want to see my boy. I'm worried. He may be sick. He'd never let us know."
The old man tried to cajole her from her forebodings, tried to reason them away, laugh them away. At last he said, with a poor effort at gruffness:
"Well, for the Lord's sake, why don't you go? He's always askin' us to come and see him. I'm kind o' homesick for a sight of the boy m'self. You haven't been to town for a month of Sundays. Throw a few things in a valise and I'll hitch up. We'll just about make the next train from the village."
She needed no coercion from without. She rose at once. As she opened the squeaky screen-door he was clumping down the steps. He paused to call back:
"Oh, Maw!"