One evening at the supper table Maggie said, too casually, too airily:
“Edward’s going out West.”
“No!” said Mamma. Lily stopped mopping up the chicken gravy with her bread, and stared with round blue eyes and round pink mouth.
“The company never sent such a young man before—and it means quite a lot more salary.”
“Then you can get married sooner,” May said, smiling at her.
“Yes!” Oh, darling May! Maggie’s heart glowed with gratitude.
“Poor little girl,” said Mamma.
“I want him to go! He asked me if he should, and I told him to go.”
“Don’t you mind?” asked Lily.
(“I have been sentenced to death next week.”
“Don’t you mind?”)
“Would he like us to keep his bicycle for him?” Victor suggested in a small respectful voice. “I’d keep it oiled and everything, and I wouldn’t ride it and I wouldn’t let Jake ride it either. You ask him, Maggie.”
Under the table Maggie squeezed her brother’s hand. The darling!
But she didn’t realize that Edward was really going, as day after day went by, until tomorrow was the day.
Here he was, here, his coat, his cheek, his hair, here to be touched and felt, his arms holding her close. Now he is here! Tomorrow he will be gone. How can it be possible that of their own volition they will part, he will go, she will stay?
When she was in his arms, he felt as if he would never dare let her go. Suppose he should lose her. A bird lies in your hands, yours to keep for always. But open your hands and the bird is lost in the sky, and, if you wait forever, your hands will still be empty.
“Maggie—it won’t be so terribly long—”
“It won’t be—a bit—” She turned her head away and bent down a branch of the snowball bush, broke off a still green snowball, and slowly, carefully, began to pull it apart and make little heaps of the blossoms on the bench beside her, three in each heap. A tear splashed down beside them.
“You’re crying!”
“I’m not!” She turned to show him she wasn’t, tears streaming over her face, her body shaken by tearing sobs.
“Mag‑gie! Oh, Mag‑gie!”
From the porch Victor’s voice calling her. Then louder—then far away.
“Mag‑gie!”
“Maggie, Maggie, promise you’ll always love me!”
Oh, she could promise that! She could even laugh as she promised.
“Maggie, where are you?”
“Here, Victor.”
“Oh!” The voice came to a standstill behind a hedge, sympathetically distant. “Well, Mamma said to tell you you must come in, she says to tell you it’s getting very chilly and you have a cold.”
“All right, we’re coming.”
Edward went down on the grass at her feet, clinging to her, burying his face on her knees. Night was coming, and lifting her lips from the dear head, the dark head, she saw each star in the sky change to a cross through her tears.
The family went to bed early, so that Maggie and Edward could be alone for their last, aching goodbyes. But Mamma couldn’t sleep. For the third time she lit her candle, and looked at Papa’s big watch that hung in the beaded pocket at the head of the bed. It was dreadfully late. He ought to have gone home ever so long ago.
“Well, I’m not going to worry about them,” she told herself. But she lay rigid, almost afraid to breathe, waiting for the sound of the front door closing and Maggie climbing the creaking stairs.
The house was coming alive—here a whisper, there a patter, not of mice nor of rain. It was breathing, you could hear it sigh.
“Perhaps he’s gone home without my hearing,” thought Mamma. “Anyway, I’m just going quietly to sleep.”
So she got up and stole out into the hall and sat down on the blanket box at the top of the stairs. There wasn’t a sound, but the lamp in the downstairs hall was still burning, and by leaning over she could see his hat lying on the sofa. This was nonsense! Such an hour! What were those crazy children thinking of? She would just call over the stairs—
What made the whole house feel so strange, trembling and alive? The banister seemed to quiver under her hand. The ticking of the clock on the stairs sounded like water falling, drop by drop—water that could never be gathered up again.
Cautiously, silently, she got up, avoided the squeaking board, went back into her room, and closed the door.
XV
Even Willie said the new cook was good. When he finished his second cup of coffee and said, “I’ve only had one cup, haven’t I?” Aunt Priscilla was so pleased that she told a story, and said, “Yes, just one,” as she poured out his third. Think of it! Three cups, when usually he only tasted it and pushed it aside.
“Isn’t your coffee all right, Willie?” she would ask him anxiously, and he would answer:
“Coffee, my dear? Oh—do you mean my cup of warmish dishwater?”
Three cups of coffee and two helps of fried chicken and three big pieces of cornbread, and when he finished breakfast he smiled and patted her cheek.
She felt so happy, like a good little girl who has been praised. When he went out, she got down on her knees in the dining-room, with her head on his chair, while flies buzzed around her and the parrot screamed, “Will-lee! Hello! Want a crack-kah? Hello! Oh dear!”
“Our Father which art in Heaven, thank thee ever so much for making Cobina a good cook and thank thee for Willie. Amen.”
She must do something nice for somebody, she felt so happy. The peaches were ripe on her own peach tree, the tree Willie had planted on her first birthday after they were married. She loved her little peach tree—its pink blooming
