“Got it all mapped out!” said Whitwell, proudly, in his turn. “Look out you don't slip up in your calculations. That's all.”
“I guess we cha'n't slip up.”
XIII.
Jeff came into the ugly old family parlor, where his mother sat mending by the kerosene-lamp which she had kept through all the household changes, and pushed enough of her work aside from the corner of the table to rest his arm upon it.
“Mother, I want you to listen to me, and to wait till I get done. Will you?”
She looked up at him over her spectacles from the stocking she was darning; the china egg gleamed through the frayed place. “What notion have you got in your head, now?”
“It's about Jackson. He isn't well. He's got to leave off work and go away.”
The mother's hand dropped at the end of the yarn she had drawn through the stocking heel, and she stared at Jeff. Then she resumed her work with the decision expressed in her tone. “Your father lived to be sixty years old, and Jackson a'n't forty! The doctor said there wa'n't any reason why he shouldn't live as long as his father did.”
“I'm not saying he won't live to a hundred. I'm saying he oughtn't to stay another winter here,” Jeff said, decisively.