Benefits Forgot | Page 8

found that she had cooked a little bit of a frog in the mush. Now, Jason, if she had discovered that she never would have recovered from the mortification. The only time in her life the minister stopped with her. So, though it made me choke, I swallowed it. That, sir, is my idea of courtesy. I wish you not to forget it."
Jason's cool, speculative young gaze was on his father's face as he answered:
"I understand, father."
The minister turned away. "No, you don't. I doubt if you ever do." And he did not speak again until they reached home.
[Illustration]

III
WAR

[Illustration]
III
WAR
And so Jason went away to study medicine. He worked very hard and progressed very rapidly. By the time he was twenty he was no longer "the doctor's boy." He was a real assistant in all but fees. He had no share in the doctor's income and always was desperately hard up.
At first, he did not ask his father and mother for help. He did all sorts of odd chores to pay his way. But as he progressed in his profession, he had less and less time for earning his up-keep and had finally to write home for money. His mother always answered his letters and she never failed to send him money when he asked for it. How she managed it, Jason never asked. Perhaps he was ashamed to know.
In all these four years he did not come home. He would have liked to but the trip was prohibitively expensive.
Late in the fall of 1861, he received a letter from his mother containing a ten-dollar bill. It was a short letter. "Your father can't live more than a week. Come at once."
Jason put his head down on that letter and sobbed, then dried his eyes and sought the doctor, who loaned him the rest of the money needed for the trip.
The minister's circuit had swung him round again to High Hill. Jason disembarked from the packet late one November afternoon, carrying his carpet bag. Even in November, High Hill was beautiful. Through his sadness, Jason again felt the thrill of the giant headlands, the thousand hills of his boyish imaginings.
There was the same little cottage, more weather-beaten than he had remembered it. His mother was waiting for him at the door. The four years had changed her, yet she seemed to Jason more beautiful than his mental picture of her had been.
She kissed him with trembling lips. "He's still with us," she whispered. "I'm sure he waited for you."
"What is the matter with him?" asked Jason, huskily, as he deposited his carpet bag on the sitting-room table.
"Lung fever. He took a bad cold a month ago coming home from West Virginia in the rain. He was absent-minded, you know. If it hadn't been for Pilgrim, I don't think he'd ever got here."
"Pilgrim?" asked Jason, warming his hands at the fire.
"Surely I've written you about Pilgrim. Father bought him soon after you left. He's the wisest horse that ever lived. If you're warm, now, Jason, come to your father."
He followed her into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn--O how changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over the bed.
"Ethan," she said softly, "our boy is here."
Brother Wilkins opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He tried to say something and Jason sprang to take his hand.
"Oh, he wants to speak to you and can't. O my poor dear! O Ethan, my dearest."
Jason's mother broke down. Jason put his finger on his father's wrist.
After a long moment, "Mother, he's gone," he whispered.
After the funeral, Jason wandered about the village for a day or so, trying to plan for his mother's future and his own. All the townspeople were kind to him.
"Haven't forgot how you loaned me those Harper's Monthlies before you read 'em yourself," said Mr. Inchpin. "Anything I can do for you or your mother, let me know."
The two had met in Hardwich's store, which was also the post office and the evening club for the males of High Hill. Jason had dropped in to post a letter.
A tall scraggly man joined in. "Your father was the best preacher in Ohio. We was all glad when he got back here."
"He had the gift of prayer," said an old man, in the back of the store.
There was a silence which Jason struggled in vain to break.
Then a young fellow who carried a buggy whip and smoked a cigar said, "How does the doctoring go, Jason?"
"Well, thanks," returned Jason, looking at the young fellow, intently. It was Billy Ames, he of the striped pants.
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