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“P.S.–The boys may have those chestnuts and walnuts in my room–and in my drawer there is a bit of ribbon with a locket on it I was going to give cousin Diana. Perhaps she won’t care for it, though; but if she does, she is welcome to it–it may put her in mind of old times.”‘

And this is all he said, with bitterness in his heart, as he leaned on the window and looked out at the great yellow moon that was shining so bright as to show the golden hues of the overhanging elm boughs and the scarlet of an adjoining maple.

A light ripple of laughter came up from below, and a chestnut thrown up struck him on the hand, and he saw Diana and Bill step from out the shadowy porch.

“There’s a chestnut for you, Mr. Owl,” she called, gaily, “if you will stay moping up there! Come, now, it’s a splendid evening; won’t you come?”

“No, thank you. I sha’n’t be missed,” was the reply.

“That’s true enough; the loss is your own. Good bye, Mr. Philosopher.”

“Good bye, Diana.”

Something in the tone struck strangely through her heart. It was the voice of what Diana never had felt yet–deep suffering–and she gave a little shiver.

“What an awfully solemn voice James has sometimes,” she said; and then added, with a laugh, “it would make his fortune as a Methodist minister.”

The sound of the light laugh and little snatches and echoes of gay talk came back like heartless elves to mock Jim’s sorrow.

“So much for her,” he said, and turned to go and look for his mother.

CHAPTER V.

MOTHER AND SON.

He knew where he should find her. There was a little, low work-room adjoining the kitchen that was his mother’s sanctum. There stood her work-basket–there were always piles and piles of work, begun or finished; and there also her few books at hand, to be glanced into in rare snatches of leisure in her busy life.

The old times New England house mother was not a mere unreflective drudge of domestic toil. She was a reader and a thinker, keenly appreciative in intellectual regions. The literature of that day in New England was sparse; but whatever there was, whether in this country or in England, that was noteworthy, was matter of keen interest, and Mrs. Pitkin’s small library was very dear to her. No nun in a convent under vows of abstinence ever practiced more rigorous self-denial than she did in the restraints and government of intellectual tastes and desires. Her son was dear to her as the fulfillment and expression of her unsatisfied craving for knowledge, the possessor of those fair fields of thought which duty forbade her to explore.

James stood and looked in at the window, and saw her sorting and arranging the family mending, busy over piles of stockings and shirts, while on the table beside her lay her open Bible, and she was singing to herself, in a low, sweet undertone, one of the favorite minor-keyed melodies of those days:

“O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home!”

An indescribable feeling, blended of pity and reverence, swelled in his heart as he looked at her and marked the whitening hair, the thin worn little hands so busy with their love work, and thought of all the bearing and forbearing, the waiting, the watching, the long-suffering that had made up her life for so many years. The very look of exquisite calm and resolved strength in her patient eyes and in the gentle lines of her face had something that seemed to him sad and awful–as the purely spiritual always looks to the more animal nature. With his blood bounding and tingling in his veins, his strong arms pulsating with life, and his heart full of a man’s vigor and resolve, his mother’s life seemed to him to be one of weariness and drudgery, of constant, unceasing self-abnegation. Calm he knew she was, always sustained, never faltering; but her victory was one which, like the spiritual sweetness in the face of the dying, had something of sadness for the living heart.