The Boy

The trail of the Boy was always entirely distinct, but on this especial morning it lay over house, porch, barn everything. The Mother followed it up, stooping to gather the miscellany of boyish belongings into her apron. She had a delightful scheme in her mind for clearing everything up. She wanted to see how it would seem, for once, not to have any litter of whittlings, of strings and marbles and tops! No litter of beloved birds’ eggs, snake-skins, turtle-shells! No trail of the Boy anywhere.

It had taken the whole family to get the Boy off, but now he was gone. Even yet the haze of dust the stage-coach had stirred up from the dry roadway lingered like a faint blur on the landscape. It could not be ten minutes since they had bidden the Boy his first good-bye. The Mother smiled softly.

“But I did it!” she murmured. “Of course, I had to. The idea of letting your Boy go off without kissing him good-bye! Mary,” she suddenly spoke aloud, addressing the Patient Aunt, who was following the trail too, picking up the siftings from the other’s apron “Mary, did you kiss him? There was really no need, you know, because you are not his mother. And it would have saved his feelings not to.”

The Patient Aunt laughed. She was very young and pretty, and the “patient” in her name had to do only with her manner of bearing the Boy.

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t dare to, after I saw him wipe yours off!”

“Mary!”

“With the back of his hand. I am not near-sighted. Now why should a well-meaning little kiss distress a Boy like that? That’s what I want to know.”

“It didn’t once,” sighed the Mother, gently. “Not when he was a baby. I’m glad I got in a great many of them then, while I had a chance. It was the trousers that did it, Mary. From the minute he put on trousers he objected to being kissed. I put his kilts on again one day, and he let me kiss him.”

“But it was a bribe to get you to take them off,” laughed the Patient Aunt, wickedly. “I remember; I was there. And you took them off to pay for that kiss. You can’t deny it, Bess.”

“Yes, I took them off and after that I kissed them. It was next best. Mary, does it seem very awful quiet here to you?”

“Awful. I never heard anything like it in my life. I’m going to let something drop and make a noise.” She dropped a tin trumpet, but it fell on the thick rug, and they scarcely heard it.

The front gate clicked softly, and the Father came striding up the walk, whistling exaggeratedly. He had ridden down to the corner with the Boy.

“Well, well, well,” he said; “now I shall go to work. I’m going up to my den, girls, and I don’t want to be called away for anything or anybody lower than a President or the minister. This is my first good chance to work for ten years.”

Which showed how old the Boy was. He was rather young to go off alone on a journey, but a neighbor half a mile down the glary white road was going his way, and would take him in charge. The neighbor was lame, and the Boy thought he was going to take charge of the neighbor. It was as well. Nobody had undeceived him.

In a little over half an hour three-quarters at most the trail of the Boy was wiped out. Then the Patient Aunt and the Mother sat down peacefully and undisturbed to their sewing. Everything was very spruce and cleared up. The Mother was thinking of that, and of how very, very still it was. She wished the Patient Aunt would begin to sing, or a door would slam somewhere.

“Dear me!” she thought, with a tremulous little smile, “here I am wanting to hear a door slam already! Any one wouldn’t think I’d had a special set of door nerves for years!” She started in to rock briskly. There used to be a board that creaked by the west window. Why didn’t it creak now? The Mother tried to make it.

“Mary,” she cried, suddenly and sharply “Mary!”

“Mercy! Well, what is it, my dear? Is the house afire, or anything?”

“Why don’t you talk, and not sit there as still as a post? You haven’t said a word for half an hour.”

“Why, so I haven’t, or you either, for that matter. I thought we were sitting here enjoying the calm. Doesn’t it look too lovely and fixed-up for anything, Bess? Seems like Sunday. Don’t you wish somebody would call before we get stirred up again?”

“There’s time enough. We sha’n’t get stirred up again for a week,” sighed the Mother. She seemed suddenly to remember, as a new thing, that weeks held seven days apiece; days, twenty-four hours. The little old table at school repeated itself to her mind. Then she remembered how the Boy said it. She saw him toeing the stripe in the carpet before her; she heard his high sweet sing-song:

“Sixty sec-unds make a min-it. Sixty min-its make a nour. Sixty hours make no; I mean twenty-four hours make a d-a-a-y.”

That was the way the Boy said it God bless the Boy! The Mother got up abruptly.

“I think I will go up and call on William,” she said, unsteadily. The Patient Aunt nodded gravely. “But he doesn’t like to be interrupted, you know,” she reminded, thinking of the Boy’s interruptions.

Up-stairs, the Father said “Come in,” with remarkable alacrity. He looked up from his manuscripts and welcomed her. The sheets, tossed untidily about the table were mostly blank ones.

“Well, dear?” the little Mother said, with a question in her voice.

“Not at all; bad,” he answered, gloomily. “I haven’t written a word yet, Bess. At this rate, how soon will my new book be out? It’s so confoundedly still ”

“Yes, dear, I know,” the Mother said, hastily. Then they both gazed out of the window, and saw the Boy’s little, rough-coated, ugly dog moping under the Boy’s best-beloved tree. The Boy had pleaded hard to be allowed to take the dog on the journey. They both remembered that now.

“He’s lonesome,” murmured the Mother, but she meant that they two were. And they had thought it would be such a rest and relief! But then, you remember, the Boy had never been away before, and he was only ten.

So one day and one more after it dragged by. Two from seven leaves five. The Mother secretly despaired. The second night, after the others were asleep, she stole around the house and strewed the Boy’s things about in all the rooms; but she could not make them look at ease. Nevertheless, she let them lie, and, oddly enough, no one appeared to see them next morning. All the family made fine pretence of being cheerful, and spoke often of the quietude and peace how restful it was; how they had known beforehand that it would be so, without the whooping, whistling, tramping, slamming Boy.

“So relieving to the nerves,” the Patient Aunt said.

“So soothing,” murmured the Mother, sadly.

“So confoundedly nice and still!” the Father muttered in his beard. “Haven’t had such a chance to work for ten years.” But he did not work. The third day he said he must take a little run to the city to to see his publishers, you know. There were things that needed looking after; if the Mother would toss a few things into his grip, he’d be off; back in a few days, of course. And so he went. It was a relief to the Mother, and a still further one when, on the fourth day, the Patient Aunt went away on a little visit to to some friends.

“I’m glad they’re gone,” nodded the little Mother, decisively, “for I couldn’t have stood it another day not another day! Now I’m going away myself. I suppose I should have gone anyway, but it’s much pleasanter not to have them know. They would both of them have laughed. What do they know about being a Mother and having your little Boy away? Oh yes, they can laugh and be relieved and rested and soothed! It’s mothers whose hearts break with lonesomeness mothers and ugly little dogs.” She took the moping little beast up in her lap and stroked his rough coat.

“You shall go too,” she whispered. “You can’t wait three days more, either, can you? It would have killed you, too, wouldn’t it? We are glad those other people went away, aren’t we? Now we’ll go to the Boy.”

Early the next morning they went. The Mother thought she had never been so happy before in her life, and the ugly little beast yelped with anticipative joy. In a little a very little while, now, they would hear the Boy shout see him caper feel his hard little palms on their faces. They would see the trail of the Boy over everything; not a make-believe, made-up trail, but the real, littered, Boy thing.

“I hope those other two people are enjoying their trips. We are, aren’t we?” cried the happy Mother, hugging the little ugly dog in her arms. “And they won’t know; they can’t laugh at us. We’ll never let them know we couldn’t bear it another minute, will we? The Boy sha’n’t tell on us.”

The place where the Boy was visiting was quite a long way from the railroad station, but they trudged to it gayly, jubilantly. While yet a good way off they heard the Boy and came upon his trail. The little dog nearly went into fits with frantic joy at the cap he found in the path, but the Mother went straight on to meet the little shouting voice in her ears. Half-way to it she saw the Boy. But wait. Who was that with him? And that other one, laughing in his beard? If there had been time to be surprised but she only brushed them both aside and caught up the Boy. The Boy the Boy the Boy again! She kissed him all over his freckled, round little face. She kissed his hair and his hands and his knees.

“Look out; he’s wiping them off!” laughed the Patient Aunt. “But you see he didn’t wipe mine off.”

“You didn’t kiss me. You darsn’t. You ain’t my mother,” panted the Boy, between the kisses. He could not keep up with them with the back of his brown little hand.

“But I am, dear. I’m your mother,” cooed the Mother, proud of herself.

After a while she let him go because she pitied him. Then she stood up, stern and straight, and demanded things of these other two.

“How came you here, Mary? I thought you were going on a visit. Is this the way you see your publishers, William?”

“I I couldn’t wait,” murmured the Impatient Aunt. “I wanted to hear him shout. You know how that is, Bess.” But there was no apology in the Father’s tone. He put out his hand and caught the Boy as he darted past, and squared him about, with his sturdy little front to his mother. The Father was smiling in a tender way.

“He is my publisher,” he said. “I would rather he published my best works than any one else. He will pay the highest royalty.”

And the Mother, when she slipped across to them, kissed not the Boy alone, but them both.

The next day they took the Boy back in triumph, the three of them and the little dog, and after that there was litter and noise and joy as of old.