Bennie noticed that his mother didn’t say very much the night before, but just sat and looked at him, while he was going over the tickets with his father, and folding them into a new pocketbook, with $100 in new bills, which Mr. Capen had brought home from the bank. Bennie put the purse into an inside pocket, and went over to his mother.
“Gee, Ma,” he said, “you’d think I was going to the North Pole or somewhere, instead of just to visit Uncle Bill. Nobody’s going to speak cross to your little Bennie, or make him take any wooden money, or hit him over the bean. Don’t you worry. I guess me ’n’ Spider can take a railroad trip without anybody needing to worry.”
But though he spoke with a laugh, Bennie didn’t feel very much like laughing, because when his mother looked at him, and tried to smile, he saw the tears behind her eyes, and he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t because she was afraid for him, but because he was going to be away from her so long. He couldn’t quite understand this, but he loved his mother tremendously, and it made him want to weep, too. In about one minute he was weeping, and so was his mother, with an arm about his shoulder.
Mr. Capen looked up in surprise.
“Hello!” he said. “Hello! So you don’t want to go, eh?”
Bennie straightened up, and gulped hard, trying to swallow his sob in a grin.
“Where—where do you get that stuff?” he demanded.
“Well, you don’t seem very cheerful about going.”
“It was ’cause Ma wasn’t cheerful,” said Bennie.
“I’m cheerful, dear,” said his mother, smiling at him. “I wasn’t crying because I was sad, but just because—because—well, you won’t understand, but because you’re so big and grown up now, and can go away by yourself.”