Four people, rough, homely, sat down to a breakfast of coarse, plain cookery, and talked of common, homely things.
“I see you didn’t get so much milk as usual this morning, Jim,” said the mother. 17
“No, the line-backed heifer kicked over a half-pailful.”
“Goin’ to finish shuckin’ that west field this week, Guy?” asked the father.
“Yes. We’ll cross over before night.”
Nothing more was said. They were all hungry, and in the following silence the jangle of iron on coarse queensware, and the aspiration of beverages steaming still though undergoing the cooling medium of saucers, filled in all lulls that might otherwise have seemed to require conversation.
Not until the boys got up to go to work did the family bond draw tight enough to show. Then the mother, tenderly as a surgeon, dressed the chafed spots on her boys’ hands, saying low in words that spoke volumes, “I’ll be so glad when the corn’s all husked”; and the father followed them out onto the little porch to add, “Better quit early so’s to hear the speakin’ to-night, Guy.”
“How are you feeling to-day, father?” asked the young man, in a tone he attempted to make honestly interested, but which an infinite 18 number of repetitions had made almost automatic.
The father hesitated, and a look of sadness crept over his weathered face.
“No better, Guy.” He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, looking down into the frank blue eyes with a tenderness that made his rough features almost beautiful.