He nodded slowly. “I liked it--I don’t think I ever did any work I liked so well. It was almost as if I thought things out myself. I can’t explain how it felt--but somehow I used to forget, almost, that I was n’t planning things--It seemed so natural to do them--the things he wanted done.”
“I know.” She sighed softly. “How he must miss you!”
He seemed not to have heard her. He was following his thought, clearing it to his slow mind. “You ’re right in the midst of things down there. It’s like being fireman on one of these big engines, I guess--every shovelful you put in, you can see her fly just as if you were doing it yourself. Here it ’s different, somehow. I do first one thing and then another, but nothing seems to count much.”
“It ’s like being a brakeman,” she suggested.
“That’s it! I never thought of that! But I’ve always said I’d rather be fireman on any old engine than a high-class brakeman--Pullman or anything.”
Again the little breath of a sigh that changed quickly to a smile. “We won’t be brakemen any more,” she said. “We ’ll go live on the engine--right by the throttle--that’s what you call it, is n’t it?” A little laugh covered the words.
He bent and kissed her again. “Dear mother! You shall never go if you do not want it.”
“Ah, but I want it--more than anything in the world. But there is your father--?”
“There is father,” he said decisively. “But first we ’ll have supper.”
He went out into the kitchen and she lay in the half-dusk with the flowers clasped in her fingers. Presently she lifted them and drew them across her cheek. “It was good in You to make flowers,” she said softly, “thank You for them. ... Thank You....” The words trailed away to a breath as she held the flowers to the light, turning them a little and shaking them softly apart to look into their cool fragrance.
Then she touched them again to her cheek and lay with closed eyes.
When the boy came in a few minutes later, he stood for a moment watching her before he set the slender glass of water on the table and turned to the window, opening the blinds and letting in the late light. Her eyelids lifted and she looked out at him dreamily. “I must have been asleep,” she said. “I was picking flowers in the meadow at home and the wind blew in my face. I ran a little way--” She held out the flowers to him. “Put them in water for me, John.”