His mother still stood behind his chair. In the heavy silence of the room he could hear her uneven breathing. He heard his father turn in his chair.
“Well, Mother’s got to go west—we might all of us go,” he spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness. “Maybe we can work a small farm out there.”
“What will we do with the farm here?” As she spoke the boy felt his mother’s hand press more heavily on his shoulder. He turned from the window and caught his father’s eyes looking at him. He saw his face flush.
“I guess we got to sell it. I can get a fair price. Help is scarce and rent’s low since the dry years. We can’t afford to rent it.”
Again the boy caught his father’s glance resting hopefully on him.
“But we can’t sell the old place; we have worked it too long.”
The boy was uneasily conscious of the break in his mother’s voice. He sat up, his body stiffened. Did they expect him to stay on the farm? He wouldn’t—he could not do that! They had no right to ask this of him. But he remembered the quick hope in his father’s eyes.
He got up from his chair, walked past his mother without looking at her, picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly behind him.
The earth slept warm in the drowsiness of early afternoon. The freshness of the morning had passed and a languorous mist had fallen. The boy looked out to where earth and sky met in a haze of indefinable color. What a wonderful earth was beyond! He turned and walked heavily away. They hadn’t any right to expect that!
Half-unconsciously he went toward the grove north of the house where he had played when he was a little boy. The neighbor boys would collect in the grove on a quiet summer afternoon, dressed as Indians, and in heavy seriousness would plan a desperate attack on the little white house with its green trimmings. What happy times they used to have! But he wasn’t a boy any more, he had grown up; still he felt an expectant eagerness as he entered the cool shade of the trees.