The Whistling Mother | Page 3

home? By that time they'll all be there."
"Sure," I said, grinning at the car. We're not rich, and I don't sport a car to go to lectures with, like Hoofy and a lot of other fellows, so ours always looks darned good to me when I get home. Mother understands how I'm crazy to drive the minute I can get my hands on the wheel, so without an invitation I put her into the seat beside me and took the driver's place myself. She settled down, same as she always does, and remarked:
"It's always so good to have you drive. I never shall get quite the form you have."
Which wasn't true a bit, for she drives just as well as I do--she ought to, I taught her. But she has an awfully clever little trick of making a fellow feel good, and I like it--who wouldn't? A lot of mothers never lose an opportunity to take a son down a bit--though I don't suppose one would whose son had come to say goodbye. That same sort are the ones to weep on their boys' shoulders, though, I've noticed.
We started off at a good clip, and right away Mother said:
"Now, tell me all about it," exactly as if I'd just won an intercollegiate, or something like that.
So I told it all to her, and was glad of the chance. I hadn't had time to write much about it, but I could talk fast enough, and I did; and she listened--well, she listened just exactly as another fellow would. I mean--you didn't have to colour the thing, or shave off anything, or fix up any dope to ease it for her, because you knew she wanted it straight. So, naturally, you gave it to her straight--which is much the best way, if people only realized it--for it's all got to come out in the end. And when I was through, what do you suppose she said? Just about the last thing you'd expect any mother to say:
"It's all perfectly great, and I don't wonder you want to go. Why, if you didn't want to go, Jack, I should feel that I'd been the wrong sort of mother."
Now, honestly, do you blame me? I looked down at her--I'm a good deal taller than she is--and for a minute I wanted to get down in front of her among the gear-shifts and put my head in her lap. But of course I didn't do anything so idiotic as that. I just laughed and said: "Not you,"--and put out my hand and squeezed hers--she'd left off her motoring gloves. And she squeezed back, and looked up at me with those black eyes of hers--and that was all there was of it, and we were off again on details, with no scene to remember. A fellow doesn't like scenes.
Well, then we got back to the house, and everybody was there--except Dad, and he came soon. There were my two young sisters, Sally and Sue; and my kid brother, Jimmy--mad as fury because he hadn't been told; and Grandfather and Grandmother. Everybody was all smiles, and nobody even suggested that the time was short--which it blamed was. Dad came in and shook my hand off, and we settled down to talk.
Pretty soon there was dinner, a perfectly ripping dinner, with everything I like--including tons of jelly, at sight of which I grinned at Mother and she grinned back--if you can call her gorgeous smile a grin. After dinner the lights were put on and we had some music, as we always do when I'm home--little family orchestra with two fiddles, a flute, my mandolin, and the piano, and I noticed we didn't play any but the jolliest sort of things. Then Dad and I sat down again on the big couch in front of the fireplace to smoke and talk, with the kids hanging round till long past their bed-time. I went up with Jimmy, my twelve-year-old brother, when at last he was ordered off to bed, and told him a lot of yarns and made him laugh like everything--which was rather a triumph, for I'd been afraid his eyes were a bit bleary.
When I came back everybody had cleared out except Mother. My heart came up in my throat for a minute, she looked so pretty and young and regularly splendid, there by the fire. I said to myself: "I don't believe I can stand a heart-to-heart talk--and not break. But I've got to go through with it--and I will, if it takes a leg!"
Well--I've always called her my whistling mother. It's a queer title, but it's hers in a peculiar way. She always could whistle like a blackbird. She never did it for exhibition; I don't mean that--I should say not--but she did do it