And as she clung like this the younger slipped out from the elder’s hand and ran swift as a young hare across the field and disappeared into the dusk. There were these two left, the mother and her bitter elder son. Then she faltered, “He is such a child yet, son, only fourteen and with his mind still on play.”
But the young man replied, “Was I child at fourteen? Did I play at harvest time when I was fourteen and needed I to have you bribe me with a ring and a new robe and this and that I had not earned?”
Then she knew the silly younger lad had boasted of what he would have and she stood speechless, caught in her fault, staring at her son and silent, and he went on and cried, his bitterness bursting from him, “Yes, you keep the money, and I give you all we earn. I never take a penny for my own, not even to smoke a little pipe of any kind or take a bowl of wine or buy myself anything a young man might have and count it but his due. Yet you must promise him all I never had! And for what? To do the labor that he ought to do for nothing and to pay for what he eats and wears!”
“I did not promise rings and robes,” she said in a low and troubled voice, half afraid of this angry son of hers who was so grave and quiet on other days that she did not know him now.
“You did!” he said most passionately. “Or if not that, then worse, for he said he was to have what he wanted when the harvest money was in and taxes paid. He said you promised!”
“I meant some small toy or other, costing but a penny or so,” she answered, shamed before this good son of hers. And then plucking up her courage—for was he not her son still?—she added, “And if I did promise a little toy it was but to save him from your angers on him always, whatever he may do, so that you keep him down with all your cruel looks and words—and now blows!”
But he would say no more. He fell to the sheaves again and worked as though some demon had him, he worked so hard and fast. The mother stood looking at him, not knowing what to do, feeling he was hard, too, with her little son, and yet knowing somehow she was wrong. Then as she looked she saw the young man was very near to tears, so that he set his jaws hard to keep back a sob, and when she saw this sign of feeling in him, such as she had never seen in him who always seemed so usual and content and without any desire, her heart grew soft as ever it did when she had harmed a child of hers, although he did not know it, and she softened to him more than she had ever done before and she cried quickly, “Son, I am wrong, I know. I have not done well enough for you of late. I have not seen how you have grown into a man. But man you are, and now I see it, and you shall take the man’s place in our house and you shall have the money and the chief place in name as well as in the labor you have always done. Yes, I see you are a man now, and I will do straightway what I have put off too long. I will find a wife for you and it will be your turn now and hers. I have not seen it, but now I see it well.”
So she made amends. He muttered something then that she could not hear and turned his back and said no more but worked on. But she felt eased by her amends and went back crying briskly, “Well, and all the rice will be burned, I swear—” and this she said to cover up the feeling of the moment and make it usual.
But when she was home again she busied herself here and there forgetting all her weariness, and when the maid asked, “Mother, what was wrong?” she answered quickly, “Nothing much amiss, child, except your younger brother would not do his share, or so his brother said. But brothers always quarrel, I think,” and she ran and made an extra dish from some radishes she pulled, and sliced them and poured vinegar upon them and sesame oil and soy sauce, such as she knew her son loved. And as she worked she pondered her amends and it seemed true to her her son should wed and she blamed herself because she had leaned on him as on a man, and yet he had not man’s reward, and she set her mind to do all that she had said she would.
Her elder son came in at last and later than usual so that it was wholly dark and she could not see his face until he came within the light of the candle she had lit and set ready on the table. She looked at him closely then, without his seeing her, and she saw he was himself again and pleased with what she had said and all his anger gone. And seeing this peace
