FullReads

“Poor mother! how she did love early weather like this!” he said, half aloud. “She’d been getting out to the door twenty times a day, just to have a look. An’ how she’d laugh to hear the frogs again! Oh, poor me! poor me!” For the first time he found himself in tears. The grim old man leaned on the fence, and tried to keep back the sobs that shook his bent shoulders. He was half afraid and half ashamed, but there he stood and cried. At last he dried his eyes, and went slowly into the house, as if in hope of comfort as well as shelter.

The two sisters were busy in an upper room. They had seen William Haydon drive away, and their sympathy had been much moved by the sight of his father’s grief. They stood at a window watching him from behind the curtain.

“He feels it much as anybody could,” said Mrs. Stevens, not without a certain satisfaction in this tribute to her own dear sister. “Somehow or ‘nother your brother is so methodical and contained, Mis’ Martin, that I shouldn’t have looked to see him give way like other men.”

“He never was one that could show his feelin’s,” answered Mrs. Martin. “I never saw him shed tears before as I know of, but many’s the time he hasn’t been able to control his voice to speak. I wonder what made William hurry off so? His back looked kind o’ provoked. They couldn’t have had no words; whatever it was, they couldn’t had no words so soon as this; an’ William ‘s always respectful.”

“‘T ain’t that either,” she added, a moment later. “I’ve seen sights o’ folks in trouble, and I don’t know what nor why it is, but they always have to get through with a fractious spell before they can get to work again. They’ll hold up an’ ‘pear splendid, and then something seems to let go, an’ everything goes wrong, an’ every word plagues ’em. Now Isr’el’s my own poor brother, an’ you know how I set by him, Mis’ Stevens; but I expect we’ll have to walk soft to get along with him for a week or two to come. Don’t you go an’ be too gentle, neither. Treat him just’s you would anyway, and he’ll fetch himself into line the quicker. He always did have days when he wouldn’t say nothing to nobody. It does seem’s if I ought to be the one to stop longer with him, an’ be the most help; but you know how I’m situated. And then ‘t is your sister’s things that’s to be looked over, and you and Marilla is the proper ones.”

“I wish ‘t was so you could stop,” Mrs. Stevens urged honestly. “I feel more acquainted with you than I do with Marilly. But I shall do my best, as I shall want those who come to do for my things when I’m past an’ gone. I shall get William to come an’ help us; he knows more about his mother’s possessions than anybody, I expect. She made a kind of girl of him, for company’s sake, when he was little; and he used to sew real pretty before his fingers got too big. Don’t you recall one winter when he was house-bound after a run o’ scarlet fever? He used to work worsted, and knit some, I believe he did; but he took to growin’ that spring, and I chanced to ask him to supply me with a couple o’ good holders, but I found I’d touched dignity. He was dreadful put out. I suppose he was mos’ too manly for me to refer to his needlework. Poor Marthy! how she laughed! I only said that about the holders for the sake o’ sayin’ somethin’, but he remembered it against me more than a year.”

The two aunts laughed together. “Boys is boys, ain’t they?” observed Mrs. Stevens, with great sagacity.