Mrs. Cradlebow was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the Wallencampers the direful anathema of "not being neighborly."
She informed me, while the singers were gathered, as usual, at the Ark, that Luther had gone to make farewell visits to his friends. He had three married sisters living in different parts of the State. They had children. The children were very fond of him, and he was going on such a long voyage. Mrs. Cradlebow was looking beyond the singers, her eyes shining clear and sad above the pathetic smile on her lips—
"And he says he shan't come back again until he comes to give me such pleasure as I never dreamed of."
Those words come to me now, either as part of the endless mockery of life, or as strains of hidden music, deep and true, running ever beneath the world's dull misinterpretation.
Afterwards, the choir of voices in the room formed an effectual shield for confidential conversation.
"You don't know what a good boy he's always been to me, teacher," Mrs. Cradlebow continued, with a manner unusual to her, I thought, as of one seeking for sympathy; "so that I've learned to depend so much on him, more, I think, than on anybody else. Some boys when they're growing up so, they feel independent and they answer you back short, but the older he grew, the gentler he was to me, always, and if he had any trouble, it never made him cross to me; and I think it's harder to see anybody so than if they was cross, for he's quick in ways, I know, but when things go real hard against him, he's patient."
"He ought not to know much about trouble yet," I answered hopefully, with the consciousness of one who has fathomed all the mysteries of grief and can yet speak gayly of the forlorn background.
"He doesn't know enough about the world, I'm afraid," said Mrs. Cradlebow, and her eyes, fixed on my face, seemed to me to be looking gently into my inmost heart. "He expects so much, and he never looks out for himself. I wish he'd be content to go fishing with the other boys—they always come back in the autumn—and not want to sail so far."
I was almost angry because of the embarrassment I felt under that clear glance.
