The Whistling Mother | Page 6

Even when it came to Mother, whom of course I always leave till the last, she just gave me one good kiss, with her hands on my shoulders, and then I jumped on board. The train didn't linger long, for which I was mighty glad. When it pulled out, and I looked back at them all standing there--the whole bunch of them--suddenly I couldn't see them awfully well. But I gave a big wink that cleared my eyes, and saw that Mother was smiling, just as she always does, exactly as if I'd been going back to prep-school after my first vacation home. It wasn't a teary smile, either--it was her very best.... I see it now, sometimes, when I'm just dropping off to sleep.
I've thought about that send-off a lot since I got away. I've realized since, more than I did then, that it must have taken just sheer pluck on all their parts to see it through as they did. Of course, my young sisters couldn't understand all it meant, but my kid brother's read a heap, as I easily found out when we talked about it, and I know he had to do a few swallowings of the throat on the side not to show how he felt more than he did. As for Grandfather and Grandmother, they went through the Civil War, and they knew, better than any of us, what might be ahead. Dad--well--Dad has wonderful control of himself always, and I should be surprised if I saw his heart on his sleeve at any time, yet I knew perfectly that he felt the whole thing tremendously. He was banking on doing his bit in the Home Defence League, and the Red Cross, and everywhere else he could get his hand in, and I could tell well enough that he was aching to be in active service.
But after all, it's the mothers, I think, who do the biggest giving when their sons go to war. I suspect it's what they put into their sons that stands for the real stuff in the crisis. I don't think there are many weak mothers, like Hoofy Gilbert's, even among the ones who are invalids. But I wish more of them understood what it is to a fellow to have his mother hold her head up!
[Illustration: musical notation]

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