When he began his thinking again, I thought it was to wonder why Jo should not feel grateful to him now instead of in the future (he was sure he would then), after he was dead, and in need of no evidence that the course he had pursued was right.
That night I resolved to remain awake to see if my mother came to me in my room. She did not disappoint me, and, coming in quietly, sat down on the foot of the bed, where she remained in deep study a long while. I could not see her face, but I was certain it was thoughtful and sad, and that she felt ill at ease, and wretched. The moon was shining outside, and she pulled aside the curtain to look at us. At last she got up, and bending over the bed kissed me tenderly. I threw my arms about her neck, and said: “Mother!”
She fell on her knees beside the bed, and sobbed in such distress that my father heard her, and came in hurriedly from the other room to inquire what was the matter. But only her sobbing answered him, and speaking to her tenderly, as if divining what had affected her, he led her away, with his arm around her.
“Your father has been thinking again,” Jo said, as the door closed upon them. “I was awake, too. Ned, never keep anything from me again.”
WITH REFERENCE TO A MAN WHO WAS SENT WEST TO GROW UP WITH THE COUNTRY, OR GET KILLED.
A few months after the Shepherds came to Fairview, and after they had become fairly settled in their new home (they lived beyond Erring’s Ford, and on the other edge of the timber which began there), a fellow arrived who was thoroughly disliked from the moment of his appearance, because he had an insolent manner, an insolent walk, and was insolent in everything he did, to say nothing of his flashy dress and a general air of impudence. His name was Clinton Bragg, and as he appeared there in company with the Shepherds, it was soon understood that in the country from which they came their families had been intimate and friends. I think he only consented to visit Fairview church on the Sunday of his first appearance, as a geologist consents to enter a dirty pit in the earth, for the satisfaction of seeing curious specimens and formations, and he regarded the people he saw, whom he looked at with a cool stare, as a herd of peculiar beasts or a drove of something.