But there the boy was not clad for winter and he waited shivering in the chill of morning and evening, and at last she set her lips and made the garments small for him and she comforted herself and said in her heart, “If he comes we can sell some of the rice and buy new ones. If he should come at the new year he will take pleasure in the new garments.”
So the winter wore on and it seemed to the woman that the man must surely come at the new year, a time when all men go to their homes if they still live and are not beggars. So when any asked her she began to say, “He will come home for the new year festival,” and the old mother said a score of times a day, “When my son comes at new year. …” and the children hoped too for the day. Now and again the gossip would smile and say in her malice, and she was making herself a fine new pair of shoes against the day of festival, “It is strange no letter comes from that man of yours, and I know none comes, for the letter writer tells me so.”
Then the mother would answer with outward calm, “But I have heard several times by mouth of one who passed, and my man and I have never held with much writing and the good money that must go out for it, and no knowing, either, what hired writers forget to say and it is all written and it is public for the whole street to know when once it does come to me. I am glad he sends no letters.”
So did she silence the gossip, and so much she said he would come at the new year that truly it seemed to her he would. The time drew near and everyone in the hamlet was busy for the feast, and she must needs be busy, too, not only for the children, to make them new shoes and wash their garments clean and make a new cap for the babe, but she must be busy for the man, also. She filled two great baskets with the rice, all she dared to spare, and carried them to the town, and sold them at but a little less in price than the man did, and this was well enough, seeing she was a woman bargaining alone with men. With the money she bought two red candles and incense to burn before the god and red letters of luck to paste upon the tools and on the plough and farm things that she used, and she bought a little lard and sugar to make sweet cakes for the day. Then with what was left she went into a cloth shop and bought twenty feet or so of good blue cotton cloth and to another shop and bought five pounds of carded cotton wool for padding.
Yes, she was so sure by now he would come that she even set her scissors in that cloth and she cut it slowly and with pains and care and she made a coat and trousers of the good stuff and padded them evenly and quilted them, and so she finished the garments to the last button she made of bits of cloth twisted hard and sewed fast. Then she put the garments away against his coming, and to all of them it seemed the garments brought the man more nearly home again.
But the day dawned and he did not come. No, all day long they sat in their clean clothes, the children clean and frightened lest they soil themselves, and the old woman careful not to spill her food upon her lap, and the mother made herself to smile steadfastly all through the day, and she told them all, “It is still day yet, and he may yet come in the day.” There came those to the door who had been good fellows with her man and they came to wish him well if he were come, and she pressed tea on them and the little cakes and when they asked she said, “Truly he may come today, but it may be his master cannot spare him days enough to come so far, and I hear his master loves him well and leans on him.”
And when the next day the women came she said this also and she smiled and seemed at ease and said, “Since he is not come, there will come word soon, I swear, and tell me why,” and then she spoke of other things.
So the days passed and she talked easily and the children and the old woman believed what she said, trusting her in everything.
But in the nights, in the dark nights, she wept silently and most bitterly. Partly she wept because he was gone, but sometimes she wept, too, because she was so put to shame, and sometimes she wept because she was a lone woman and life seemed too hard for her with these four leaning on her.
One day when she sat thinking of her weeping it came to her that at least she could spare herself the shame. Yes, when she thought of the money she had spent for his new garments and he did not come, and of the cakes she had made and of the incense burned to pray for him, and he did not come, and when she thought of the gossip’s sly looks and all her whispered hints and the wondering doubtful looks of even her good cousin, when time passed and still the man did not come, then it seemed to her she must spare herself the shame.
And she wiped her tears away and plotted and she thought of this to do. She carried all
