Jane Field | Page 5

erect in the midst of the children. "I don't think I need
any vacation," said she, smiling constrainedly. She pushed gently past
Mrs. Babcock, with the children at her heels.
"You'd better take a little one," Mrs. Babcock called after her.
Lois kept on as if she did not hear. Her face was flushed, and her head
seemed full of beating pulses.
One of the children, a thin little girl in a blue dress, turned around and
grimaced at Mrs. Babcock; another pulled Lois' dress. "Teacher, Jenny
Whitcomb is makin' faces at Mis' Babcock," she drawled.
"Jenny!" said Lois sharply; and the little girl turned her face with a
scared nervous giggle. "You mustn't ever do such a thing as that again,"
said Lois. She reached down and took the child's little restive hand and
led her along.

Lois had not much farther to go. The children all clamored, "Good-by,
teacher!" when she turned in at her own gate.
She went in through the sitting-room to the kitchen, and settled down
into a chair with her hat on.
"Well, so you've got home," said her mother; she was moving about
preparing supper. She smiled anxiously at Lois as she spoke.
Lois smiled faintly, but her forehead was frowning. "Has that Mrs.
Babcock been here?" she asked.
"Yes. Did you meet her?"
"Yes, I did; and I'd like to know what she meant telling me I'd ought to
take a vacation, and I looked bad. I wish people would let me alone
tellin' me how I look."
"She meant well, I guess," said her mother, soothingly. "She said she
was goin' to send you over a dish of her honey."
"I don't want any of her honey. I don't see what folks want to send
things in to me, as if I were sick, for."
"Oh, I guess she thought I'd like some too," returned her mother, with a
kind of stiff playfulness. "You needn't think you're goin' to have all that
honey."
"I don't want any of it," said Lois. The window beside which she sat
was open; under it, in the back yard, was a little thicket of mint, and
some long sprays of sweetbrier bowing over it. Lois reached out and
broke off a piece of the sweetbrier and smelled it.
"Supper's ready," said her mother, presently; and she took off her hat
and went listlessly over to the table.
The table, covered with a white cloth, was set back against the wall,
with only one leaf spread. There were bread and butter and custards and
a small glass dish of rhubarb sauce for supper.

Lois looked at the dish. "I didn't know the rhubarb was grown," said
she.
"I managed to get enough for supper," replied her mother, in a casual
voice.
Nobody would have dreamed how day after day she had journeyed
stiffly down to the old garden spot behind the house to watch the
progress of the rhubarb, and how triumphantly she had brought up
those green and rosy stalks. Lois had always been very fond of rhubarb.
She ate it now with a keen relish. Her mother contrived that she should
have nearly all of it; she made a show of helping herself twice, but she
took very little. But it was to her as if she also tasted every spoonful
which her daughter ate, and as if it had the flavor of a fruit of Paradise
and satisfied her very soul.
After supper Lois began packing up the cups and saucers.
"Now you go in the other room an' set down, an' let me take care of the
dishes," said Mrs. Field, timidly.
Lois faced about instantly. "Now, mother, I'd just like to know what
you mean?" said she. "I guess I ain't quite so far gone but what I can
wash up a few dishes. You act as if you wanted to make me out sick in
spite of myself."
"I thought mebbe you was kind of tired," said her mother,
apologetically.
"I ain't tired. I'm jest as well able to wash up the supper dishes as I ever
was." Lois carried the cups and saucers to the sink with a resolute air,
and Mrs. Field said no more. She went into her bedroom to change her
dress; she was going to evening meeting.
Lois washed and put away the dishes; then she went into the
sitting-room, and sat down by the open window. She leaned her cheek
against the chairback and looked out; a sweet almond fragrance of

cherry and apple blossoms came into her face; over across the fields a
bird was calling. Lois did not think it tangibly, but it was to her as if the
blossom scent and the bird call came out of her own future. She was ill,
poor,