Jane Field | Page 5

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, and overworked, but she was not unhappy, for her future was yet, in a way, untouched; she had not learned to judge of it by hard precedent, nor had any mistake of hers made a miserable certainty of it. It still looked to her as fair ahead as an untrodden field of heaven.
She was quite happy as she sat there; but when her mother, in her black woollen dress, entered, she felt instantly nervous and fretted. Mrs. Field said nothing, but the volume and impetus of her anxiety when she saw her daughter's head in the window seemed to actually misplace the air.
Presently she went to the window, and leaned over to shut it.
"Don't shut the window, mother," said Lois.
"I'm dreadful afraid you'll catch cold, child."
"No, I sha'n't, either. I wish you wouldn't fuss so, mother."
Mrs. Field stood back; the meeting bell began to ring.
"Goin'