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Barb" his tones sank and hardened "why did that black hussy try to avoid telling me you were home and Fair had gone off with that whelp, John March? What? Why don't you speak so I can hear? What are you afraid of?" "I'm afraid we'll disturb mom-a. Johanna should have told you plainly." "Oh! indeed! I tell you, if it hadn't been for your mother's presence I'd have thrown her out of the window."
"Of course!" said Flora, sparkling afresh. "Even Steve understands that, grandma." Her foot was on a step of the carriage. A child plucked her flowing sleeve: "Misses! Mom-a say'" he pressed into her grasp something made of broadcloth, very red and golden "here yo' husband's cap." Thanks are due to Mr.
She thought if I'd leave her she might drop asleep." He smiled contemptuously. "How long ago was that?" "About fifteen minutes." "It was an hour ago! Barb, you've got hold of another novel. Haven't you learned yet that you can't tell time by that sort of watch?" "Is mom-a awake?" asked the girl, starting from the mantel-piece. "Yes stop!"
"I don't know; you can't imagine mom-a doing such a thing, can you?" "What! Cousin Rose? Why, of all women she was just the sort to have done it. Barb, you'd do it!" Fannie expected her friend to look at her with an expression of complimented surprise. But the surprise was her own when Barbara gave a faint start and bent lower over the parapet.
"An' Dod bless ev'ybody, Uncle Leviticus, an' Aunt Jinny, an' Johanna, an' Willis, an' Trudie, an' C'nelius" a sigh "an mom-a, an' that's all an' " "And pop-a?" No response. The mother prompted again. Still the child was silent. "And pop-a, you know the best last." "An' Dod bless the best last," said Barbara, sadly. A pause. "Don't you know all good little girls ask God to bless their pop-a's?"
"Don't you?" regretfully asked John; "that's one of my faults too." "No; but I've always revered mom-a so deeply that except once or twice to Fannie, when Fannie spoke first, I've never talked about her." Yet Barbara went on telling of her mother from a full heart, her ears ravished by the music of John's interjected approvals.
Once or twice during the war when otherwise he might have come home on furlough, the enemy had intervened. Yet she held no enthusiastic unbelief in his personal reality, and prayed for him night and morning: that God would bless him and keep him from being naughty "No, that ain't it an' keep him f'om bein' no, don't tell me! and ast him why he don't come see what a sweet mom-a I'm dot!"
Barbara lay on a rug in her room, reading before the fragrant ashes of a perished fire. She heard her father's angry step, and his stern rap on her door. Before she could more than lift her brow he entered. "Barb! O what sort of posture " She started, and sat coiled on the rug. "Barb, how is it you're not with your mother?" "Mom-a sent me out, pop-a.
It had been election-day and the college was silent with chagrin. "Is pop-a going to get elected, mom-a?" "I don't think he is, my child." "But you hope he is, don't you?" "Listen," murmured the mother. Barbara heard a horse's feet. Presently her father's step was in the hall and on the stairs.
The daughter beamed on the maid, and turned to the bed; but consternation quenched the smile when she beheld her mother's face. "Why, mom-a, sweet." A thin hand closed weakly on her own, and two sunken blue eyes, bright with distress, looked into hers. "Where is he?" came a feeble whisper. "Pop-a? Oh, he's coming. If he doesn't come in a moment, I'll bring him."
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