第6章 CHAPTER I(5)

It's been a little too plain for me ever since.Whenever Ilook at your mother's face,I see what she saw,so I hold my tongue and say,in my heart,`Give her a mite more time.'Some day it will come.She does love you,Elnora.Everybody does,honey.It's just that she's feeling so much,she can't express herself.You be a patient girl and wait a little longer.After all,she's your mother,and you're all she's got,but a memory,and it might do her good to let her know that she was fooled in that.""It would kill her!"cried the girl swiftly."Uncle Wesley,it would kill her!What do you mean?""Nothing,"said Wesley Sinton soothingly."Nothing,honey.

That was just one of them fool things a man says,when he is trying his best to be wise.You see,she loved him mightily,and they'd been married only a year,and what she was loving was what she thought he was.She hadn't really got acquainted with the man yet.

If it had been even one more year,she could have borne it,and you'd have got justice.Having been a teacher she was better educated and smarter than the rest of us,and so she was more sensitive like.

She can't understand she was loving a dream.So I say it might do her good if somebody that knew,could tell her,but I swear to gracious,I never could.I've heard her out at the edge of that quagmire calling in them wild spells of hers off and on for the last sixteen years,and imploring the swamp to give him back to her,and I've got out of bed when I was pretty tired,and come down to see she didn't go in herself,or harm you.What she feels is too deep for me.I've got to respectin'her grief,and I can't get over it.Go home and tell your ma,honey,and ask her nice and kind to help you.If she won't,then you got to swallow that little lump of pride in your neck,and come to Aunt Maggie,like you been a-coming all your life.""I'll ask mother,but I can't take your money,Uncle Wesley,indeed I can't.I'll wait a year,and earn some,and enter next year.""There's one thing you don't consider,Elnora,"said the man earnestly."And that's what you are to Maggie.

She's a little like your ma.She hasn't given up to it,and she's struggling on brave,but when we buried our second little girl the light went out of Maggie's eyes,and it's not come back.The only time I ever see a hint of it is when she thinks she's done something that makes you happy,Elnora.Now,you go easy about refusing her anything she wants to do for you.There's times in this world when it's our bounden duty to forget ourselves,and think what will help other people.Young woman,you owe me and Maggie all the comfort we can get out of you.

There's the two of our own we can't ever do anything for.

Don't you get the idea into your head that a fool thing you call pride is going to cut us out of all the pleasure we have in life beside ourselves.""Uncle Wesley,you are a dear,"said Elnora."Just a dear!

If I can't possibly get that money any way else on earth,I'll come and borrow it of you,and then I'll pay it back if I must dig ferns from the swamp and sell them from door to door in the city.I'll even plant them,so that they will be sure to come up in the spring.I have been sort of panic stricken all day and couldn't think.

I can gather nuts and sell them.Freckles sold moths and butterflies,and I've a lot collected.Of course,I am going back to-morrow!I can find a way to get the books.

Don't you worry about me.I am all right!

"Now,what do you think of that?"inquired Wesley Sinton of the swamp in general."Here's our Elnora come back to stay.Head high and right as a trivet!

You've named three ways in three minutes that you could earn ten dollars,which I figure would be enough,to start you.Let's go to supper and stop worrying!"Elnora unlocked the case,took out the pail,put the napkin in it,pulled the ribbon from her hair,binding it down tightly again and followed to the road.From afar she could see her mother in the doorway.She blinked her eyes,and tried to smile as she answered Wesley Sinton,and indeed she did feel better.She knew now what she had to expect,where to go,and what to do.

Get the books she must;when she had them,she would show those city girls and boys how to prepare and recite lessons,how to walk with a brave heart;and they could show her how to wear pretty clothes and have good times.

As she neared the door her mother reached for the pail.

"I forgot to tell you to bring home your scraps for the chickens,"she said.

Elnora entered."There weren't any scraps,and I'm hungry again as I ever was in my life.""I thought likely you would be,"said Mrs.Comstock,"and so I got supper ready.We can eat first,and do the work afterward.What kept you so?I expected you an hour ago."Elnora looked into her mother's face and smiled.It was a queer sort of a little smile,and would have reached the depths with any normal mother.

"I see you've been bawling,"said Mrs.Comstock.