show your gratitude.”
“Yes, mother.”
“And, David, watch your temper and, whatever happens, I shall have no fears for your future.”
His mother seldom talked to him in this wise. He thought about it after he lay in his little cot in the sitting room that night; then his mind wandered to Joe Forbes and his wonderful tales of the West. He fell asleep to dream of cowboys and prairies. When he awoke the sun was sending golden beams through the eastward window.
“Mother isn’t up,” he thought in surprise. He stole quietly out to the kitchen, kindled a fire with as little noise as possible, put the kettle over, set the table, and then went into the one tiny bedroom where his mother lay in her bed, still–very still.
“Mother,” he said softly.
There was no response.
“Mother,” he repeated. Then piercingly, in excitement and fear, “Mother!”
At last he knew.
He ran wildly to the outer door. Bill Winters, fortunately sober, was driving slowly by.
“Bill!”
“What’s the matter, Dave?” looking into the boy’s white face. “Your ma ain’t sick, is she?”
David’s lips quivered, but seemed almost unable to articulate.
“She’s dead,” he finally whispered.
“I’ll send Zine right over,” exclaimed Bill, slapping the reins briskly across the drooping neck of his horse.
Very soon the little house was filled to overflowing with kind and sympathetic neighbors who had come to do all that had to be done. David sat on the back doorstep until M’ri came; before the expression in his eyes she felt powerless to comfort him.
“The doctor says your mother died in her sleep,” she told him. “She didn’t suffer any.”
He made no reply. Oppressed by the dull pain for which there is no ease, he wandered from the house to the garden, and from the garden back to the house throughout the day. At sunset Barnabas drove over.
“I shall stay here to-night, Barnabas,” said M’ri, “but I want you to drive back and get some things. I’ve made out a list. Janey will know where to find them.”
“Sha’n’t I take Dave back to stay to-night?” he suggested.
M’ri hesitated, and looked at David.
“No,” he said dully, following Barnabas listlessly down the path to the road.
Barnabas, keen, shrewd, and sharp at a bargain, had a heart that ever softened to motherless children.
“Dave,” he said gently, “your ma won’t never hev to wash no more, and she’ll never be sick nor tired agen.”
It was the first leaven to his loss, and he held tight to the horny hand of his comforter. After Barnabas had driven away there came trudging down the road the little, lithe figure of an old man, who was carrying a large box. His mildly blue, inquiring eyes looked out from beneath their hedge of shaggy eyebrows. His hair and his beard were thick and bushy. Joe Forbes maintained that Uncle Larimy would look no different if his head were turned upside down.
“David,” he said softly, “I’ve brung yer ma some posies. She liked my yaller roses, you know. I’m sorry my laylocks are gone. They come early this year.”
“Thank you, Uncle Larimy.”
A choking sensation warned David to say no more.
“Things go ’skew sometimes, Dave, but the sun will shine agen,” reminded the old man, as he went on into the house.
Later, when sundown shadows had vanished and the first glimmer of the stars radiated from a pale sky, Joe came over. David felt no thrill at sight of his hero. The halo was gone. He only remembered with a dull ache that the half dollar had brought his mother none of the luxuries he had planned to buy for her.
“David,” said the young ranchman, his deep voice softened, “my mother died when I was younger than you are, but you won’t have a stepmother to make life unbearable for you.”
The boy looked at him with inscrutable eyes.
“Don’t you want to go back with me to the ranch, David? You can learn to ride and shoot.”
David shook his head forlornly. His spirit of adventure was smothered.
“We’ll talk about it again, David,” he said, as he went in to consult M’ri.
“Don’t you think the only thing for the boy to do is to go back with me? I am going to buy the ranch on which I’ve been foreman, and I’ll try to do for David all that should have been done for me when I, at his age, felt homeless and alone. He’s the kind that takes things hard and quiet; life in the open will pull him up.”
“No, Joe,” replied M’ri resolutely. “He’s not ready for that kind of life yet. He needs to be with women and children a while longer. Barnabas and I are going to take him. Barnabas suggested it, and I told Mrs. Dunne one day, when her burdens were getting heavy, that we would do so if anything like this should happen.”
Joe looked at her with revering eyes.
“Miss M’ri, you are so good to other people’s children, what would you be to your own!”
The passing of M’ri’s youth had left a faint flush of prettiness like the afterglow of a sunset faded into twilight. She was of the kind that old age would never wither. In the deep blue eyes was a patient, reflective look that told of a past but unforgotten romance. She turned from his gaze, but not before he had seen the wistfulness his speech had evoked. After he had gone, she sought David.
“I am going to stay here with you, David, for two or three days. Then Barnabas and I want you to come to live with us. I had a long talk with your mother one day, and I told her if anything happened to her you should be our boy. That made her less anxious about the future, David. Will you come?”
The boy looked up with his first gleam of interest in mundane things.
“I’d like it, but would–Jud?”
“I am afraid Jud doesn’t like anything, David,” she replied with a sigh. “That’s one reason I want you–to be a big brother to Janey, for I think that is what she needs, and what Jud can never be.”
The boy remembered what his mother had counseled.
“I’ll always take care of Janey,” he earnestly assured her.
“I know you will, David.”
Two dreary days passed in the way that such days do pass, and then David rode to his new home with Barnabas and M’ri.
Jud Brumble, a refractory, ungovernable lad of fifteen, didn’t look altogether unfavorably upon the addition to the household, knowing that his amount of work would thereby be lessened, and that he would have a new victim for his persecutions and tyrannies.
Janey, a little rosebud of a girl with dimples
