What was the use? And it was much easier, after all, to be found out. Things ran along smoothly and pleasantly after that.
Late in the autumn, Elizabeth, looking over John’s shoulder one day, laughed, then cried out, sharply. “Oh!” she said; “oh, I am sorry!” And John echoed her an instant later.
“Dear John,” the letter said, “when you were little were you ever very sick, and did you die? Oh, I see, but don’t laugh. I think I am a little out of my head to-day. One is when one is anxious. And Little Blue Overalls is very sick. I found Anne crying a little while ago, and just now she came in and found me. She didn’t mind; I don’t.
“He did not come yesterday or the day before. Yesterday I went to see why. Anne was just coming away from the door. ‘He’s sick,’ she said, in her crisp, sharp way—you know it, John—but she was white in the face. The little mother came to the door. Queer I had never seen her before—Little Blue Overalls has her blue eyes.
“There were two or three small persons clinging to her, and the very smallest one I ever saw was in her arms. She looked fright—” The letter broke off abruptly here. Another slip was enclosed that began as abruptly. “Anne says it is scarlet-fever. The doctor has been there just now. I am going to have him brought over here—you know I don’t mean the doctor. And you would not smile, either of you—not Elizabeth, anyway, for she will think of her own babies—”
“Yes, yes,” Elizabeth cried, “I am thinking!”
“—That is why he must not stay over there. There are so many babies. I am going over there now.”
The letter that followed this one was a week delayed.
“Dear John,” it said—“you must be looking out for another place. If anything should—he is very sick, John! And I could not stay here without him. Nor Anne. John, would you ever think that Anne was born a nurse? Well, the Lord made her one. I have found it out. Not with a little dainty white cap on, and a nurse’s apron—not that kind, but with light, cool fingers and a great, tender heart. That is the Lord’s kind, and it’s Anne. She is taking beautiful care of our Little Blue Overalls. The little mother and I appreciate Anne. But he is very very sick, John.
“I could not stay here. Why, there isn’t a spot that wouldn’t remind me! There’s a faint little path worn in the grass beside the stone-wall where he has been ‘sentry.’ There’s a bare spot under the horse-chestnut where he played blacksmith and ‘shoe-ed’ the saw-horse. And he used to pounce out on me from behind the old elm and demand my money or my life—he was a highwayman the first time I saw him. I’ve bought rose-pies and horse-chestnut apples of him on the front door-steps. We’ve played circus in the barn. We’ve been Indians and gypsies and Rough Riders all over the place. You must look round for another one, John. I can’t stay here.
“Here’s Anne. She says he is asleep now. Before he went he sent word to me that he was a wounded soldier, and he wished I’d make a red cross and sew it on Anne’s sleeve. I must go and make it. Good-bye. The letter will not smell good because I shall fumigate it, on account of Elizabeth’s babies. You need not be afraid.”
There was no letter at all the next week, early or late, and they were afraid Little Blue Overalls was dead. Elizabeth hugged her babies close and cried softly over their little, bright heads. Then shortly afterwards the telegram came, and she laughed—and cried—over that. It was as welcome as it was guiltless of punctuation:
“Thank the Lord John Little Blue Overalls is going to get well.”
Chapter II
The Boy
The trail of the Boy was always entirely distinct, but on this especial morning it lay over house, porch, barn—everything. The Mother followed it up, stooping to gather the miscellany of boyish belongings into her apron. She had a delightful scheme in her mind for clearing everything up. She wanted to see how it would seem, for once, not to have any litter of whittlings, of strings and marbles and tops! No litter of beloved birds’ eggs, snake-skins, turtle-shells! No trail of the Boy anywhere.
It had taken the whole family to get the Boy off, but now he was gone. Even yet the haze of dust the stage-coach had stirred up from the dry roadway lingered like a faint blur on the landscape. It could not be ten minutes since they had bidden the Boy his first good-bye. The Mother smiled softly.
“But I did it!” she murmured. “Of course—I had to. The idea of letting your Boy go off without kissing him good-bye! Mary,” she suddenly spoke aloud, addressing the Patient Aunt, who was following the trail too, picking up the siftings from the other’s apron—“Mary, did you kiss him? There was really no need, you know, because you are not his mother. And it would have saved his feelings not to.”
The Patient Aunt laughed. She was very young and pretty, and the “patient” in her name had to do only with her manner of bearing the Boy.
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t dare to, after I saw him wipe yours off!”
“Mary!”
“With the back of his hand. I am not near-sighted. Now why should a well-meaning little kiss distress a Boy like that? That’s what I want to know.”
“It didn’t once,” sighed the Mother, gently. “Not when he was a baby. I’m glad I got in a great many of them then, while I had a chance. It was the trousers that did it, Mary. From the minute he put on trousers he objected to being kissed. I put his kilts on again one day, and he let me kiss him.”
“But it was a bribe to get you to take them off,” laughed the Patient Aunt, wickedly. “I remember;—I was there. And you took them off to pay for that kiss. You can’t deny it, Bess.”
“Yes, I took them off—and after that I kissed them. It was next best. Mary, does it seem very awful quiet here to you?”
“Awful. I never heard anything like it in my life. I’m going to let something drop and make a noise.” She dropped a tin trumpet, but it fell on the thick rug, and they scarcely heard it.
The front gate clicked softly, and the Father came striding up the walk, whistling exaggeratedly. He had ridden down to the corner with the Boy.
“Well, well, well,” he said; “now I shall go to work. I’m going up to my den, girls, and I don’t want to be called away for anything or anybody lower than a President or the minister. This is my first good chance to work for ten years.”
Which showed how old the Boy was. He was rather young to go off alone on a journey, but a neighbor half a mile down the glary white road was going his way, and would take him in charge. The neighbor was lame, and the Boy thought he was going to take charge of the neighbor. It was as well. Nobody had undeceived him.
In a little over half an hour—three-quarters at most—the trail of the Boy was wiped out. Then the Patient Aunt and the Mother sat down peacefully and undisturbed to their sewing. Everything was very spruce and cleared up. The Mother was thinking of that, and of how very, very still it was. She wished the Patient Aunt would begin to sing, or a door would slam somewhere.
“Dear me!” she thought, with a tremulous
