“I don’t want to think about that. I just want to know that I’m here.” She pressed his arm gently, significantly, where he sat provisionally in the chair beside her, and he was afraid to speak lest he should scare away the hope her words gave him.
He merely said, “Well, well!” and waited for her to speak further. But her impulse had exhausted itself, as if her spirit were like one of those weak forms of life which spend their strength in a quick run or flight, and then rest to gather force for another. “Where’s Boyne?” he asked, after waiting for her to speak.
“He was here a minute ago. He’s been talking with some of the deck passengers that are going home because they couldn’t get on in America. Doesn’t that seem pitiful, poppa? I always thought we had work enough for the whole world.”
“Perhaps these fellows didn’t try very hard to find it,” said the judge.
“Perhaps,” she assented.
“I shouldn’t want you to get to thinking that it’s all like New York. Remember how comfortable everybody is in Tuskingum.”
“Yes,” she said, sadly. “How far off Tuskingum seems!”
“Well, don’t forget about it; and remember that wherever life is simplest and purest and kindest, that is the highest civilization.”
“How much like old times it seems to hear you talk that way, poppa! I should think I was in the library at home. And I made you leave it!” she sighed.
“Your mother was glad of any excuse. And it will do us all good, if we take it in the right way,” said the judge, with a didactic severity that did not hide his pang from her.