“Yes, lambin’, yes,” I says, and had to pretend I didn’t understand. And when I looked back at him, he was setting there, still and watching; but two big tears was going down his cheeks.
All of a sudden something in me, something big and quiet, turned round to me and said something. I heard it—oh, I tell you, I heard it. And it wasn’t the first time. And all over me went racing the knowledge that there was something to do for what was the matter. And while I stood there, feeling the glory of knowing that I’d got to find a way to do, somehow—like you do sometimes—to make things better, I looked down the long green stretch of the Square and in the middle of the Square I saw something. Something that was like an answer. And I put my arms round Chris and hugged him. For I’d got a plan that was like a present.
But he didn’t feel like that—not then. He kind of wriggled away. “It ain’t lovin’ time,” he says. “No.”
“No,” I says, looking down that sunny Market Square toward what I’d seen. “No, it ain’t loving time—not yet. But I tell you, I tell you it’s going to be it! Mebbe I can make ’em see—mebbe I know a way to make ’em see. Come along with me,” I says, “Lisbeth’s little boy—and help!”
Toward sundown of that first great day of the Friendship Village Home-coming we was the happiest, wore-outest set of folks I about ever see. Not everybody we’d expected and hoped for had come—even Abner Dawes, he hadn’t showed up. But then he was such a big man that I donno’s any of us thought he’d come, any of the time. Only we did enjoy having it in the Daily every few nights that he’d be there. The editor of the Friendship Evening Daily got six distinct locals out of it for “Supper Table Jottings”—six nights hand-running. Thus:
1. Abner Dawes is expected to arrive from the east for the Home-coming.
2. Abner Dawes will arrive from the east the last of the week. The occasion is the Home-coming.
3. Word has been received that Abner Dawes will reach here Thursday evening to attend the Home-coming.
4. Abner Dawes will reach here to-morrow night.