“You should come like that,” she said, and then, “you poor muddled boy. Don’t you know that I am your new mother?” she added, taking hold of his two arms and turning him about facing her. “Don’t be absurd. I don’t want a husband or a lover. I want a son of my own and I have found him. I adopted you here in this house that night when you came to me sick and covered with mud. As for these women—away with them—I’ll face them down—I did it once before and I’ll do it again. Go to your city and make your fight. Here in Caxton it is a woman’s fight.”
“It is horrible. You don’t understand,” Sam protested.
A grey, tired look came into Mary Underwood’s face.
“I understand,” she said. “I have been on that battlefield. It is to be won only by silence and tireless waiting. Your very effort to help would make the matter worse.”
The woman and the tall boy, suddenly become a man, stood in thought. She was thinking of the end toward which her life was drifting. How differently she had planned it. She thought of the college in Massachusetts and of the men and women walking under the elm trees there.
“But I have got me a son and I am going to keep him,” she said aloud, putting her hand on Sam’s arm.
Very serious and troubled, Sam went down the gravel path toward the road. He felt there was something cowardly in the part she had given him to play, but he could see no alternative.
“After all,” he reflected, “it is sensible—it is a woman’s battle.”
Half way to the road he stopped and, running back, caught her in his arms and gave her a great hug.
“Good-bye, little Mother,” he cried and kissed her upon the lips.