“Helen has put on eight pounds,” explained Lester. “The school nurse says all the children are gaining like everything, now they serve milk at recess-time.”
“Oh, yes, milk at recess-time,” said Aunt Mattie.
Helen and Henry finished their cookies and tore out to inspect their poultry. The children and Lester had gone into the chicken-business on a small scale and were raising some brooder chicks in a packing-case chicken-house in the back yard. Stephen was there already, hanging over the low wire-netting “watching their tail-feathers grow,” as he said.
Lester quoted this as he wheeled himself to the open door where Mattie stood looking out at the children fussing maternally over the little peeping yellow balls. “Honest to goodness, Mattie, their tail and wing feathers do come in so fast you can see them grow.” He added, “I’m watching feathers grow, too. Stephen is fairly sprouting wings he’s so good! It’s because he can play out of doors again, I suppose, after the winter. We’ve had such lovely weather of late.”
“Yes, it must be because he can play out of doors again,” said Aunt Mattie.
As they turned back into the kitchen, where a batch of bread was ready to be put into the oven, she asked, “Lester, aren’t you better of your indigestion lately?”
“Sh!” he warned her whimsically, his finger at his lips. “Don’t mention it aloud. I haven’t had any in months. But I don’t want it spoken about. Leave sleeping dogs lie. The doctor always said it was nervous, you know. I don’t know much about the geography of my innards, but I’ve thought once or twice that maybe that awful shakeup my nervous system got might have sorted things over into the right pile, as far as digestion goes. It’s not, however,” he said with a sudden grim, black look at his paralyzed legs, “a cure for indigestion that I could recommend.”
The tears sprang into Mattie’s eyes as she turned her face away, “It’s pretty hard!”
“I don’t pretend it’s any picnic. But it’s of no consequence of course.” He was able to say this with a bare and utter sincerity.
“Look here, Lester!” she broke out. “Why couldn’t you—I don’t believe but what you could go and be a professor somewhere in a University or a High School. Professors don’t have to walk around. And you’ve always set such store by poetry and books and everything. There can’t be anybody who’s more. …”
Lester broke in with a laugh at her absurdity. “Why, you dear old girl, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d make a mess of what they want in a school just as much as at the store. What makes you think colleges want teachers who love literature? They want somebody who can make young people sit still and listen whether they feel like it or not. They want somebody who can ‘keep order’ in a class room and drill students on dates so they can pass examinations. I couldn’t do that! And I’d loathe forcing literature down the throats of boys and girls who didn’t want it as I’d loathe selling things to people who didn’t need them. I’d be just a dead loss at it the way I always am.”
Seeing that she did not follow this, he added concretely, “Besides I could no more get a job without all the right certificates than I could set up shop as a doctor. Nowadays colleges want you to be a Ph. D. And there isn’t a crossroads High School that’d look at a man who had only had three years in a State University fifteen years ago and had been making a failure of keeping accounts in a department store ever since.”
Mattie recognized the irrefutable nature of all this. “Yes, I see,” she said sadly.
“Isn’t Mattie the ignorant, impractical old infant!” thought Lester.
She got up now, with a long breath, and silently took herself off.
Although it was long past time to start supper, she did not go home. She went straight down to Willing’s and into the Cloak-and-Suits. Eva was busy with customers as usual. “Everybody wants Eva to wait on them,” thought Mattie, sitting down heavily. Her eyes were fixed on Evangeline. What a splendid woman she was, and, now she had some money to spend on her clothes, what a stylish-looking woman! There wasn’t anybody in town could hold a candle to her. Mattie made these reflections automatically. These were always the first thoughts which came to her when she saw Eva.
But today, ravaged as she was by this new perception, in which she was so all alone, her mind dwelt little on style. What she saw today was Eva’s face, alert, interested, sympathetic, and Eva’s eyes, which had always had, so Mattie remembered, “a sort of wild look,” now so shining and quiet, looking from the suits she was showing to her customers. They were a couple of women from out in the country, elderly mother and grown-up daughter. Mattie was too far off to hear what was said, but she understood perfectly from the pantomime and from the expression of the three faces, what the situation was. The two women had thrown themselves on Eva’s taste to help them make up their minds, and Eva, looking at them intently, was putting herself wholeheartedly in their places so that she could give them her best judgment. How happy she looked!
As she watched, a lump came into Mattie’s throat, and she felt her eyes hot and misty. What in time was the matter with her? She swallowed hard and looked away and tried to think of something else. But she could not. Lester and Stephen and Henry and Helen … and Eva! … came and stood before her eyes—her opened eyes.
“My goodness! I mustn’t get to crying here in the store!” she thought, alarmed, starting up and going to the window.
When she turned around,
