Jack touched his mother’s toe in passing, and gave Becca a mysterious nod of the head, as much as to say:
“He’s the soldier from our hospital over there,” but nobody made answer to Mr. Blackstone.
Becca’s eyes filled with tears as she sat down at the tea-table, and sturdy Jack staid away until the last minute, taking all the time he could at washing his hands, that he might get as many looks as possible through the window in the hope that the bare-footed soldier might be lingering about, but he gained no glimpse of him.
Farmer Blackstone had the rheumatism sometimes, and that night he had it worse than ever, so that an hour after tea-time he was quite ready to go to bed, and his wife was quite ready to have him go, also to give him the soothing, quieting remedies he called for.
Becca was to sit up that night until eight-of-the-clock, if she made no noise to disturb her father.
While her mother was busied in getting her father comfortable, she thought, as it was such bright moonlight, she would go out to give her turkeys a count, it having been two or three nights since she had counted them.
Slipping a shawl of her mother’s over her head, she opened softly the kitchen door to steal out. The lowest possible whistle from Jack accosted her at the house corner. That lad intercepted her course, drew her back into the shadow, and bade her “Look!”
She looked across the snow, over the garden wall, into the orchard, and there, beneath her apple-tree, stood something between a man and a scarecrow, and it appeared to be looking up at the sleeping turkeys. Both arms were uplifted.