Mrs. Wickersham helped her son from his bed to a chair on the porch, and
spread a patchwork quilt over his knees when he was seated.
"Don't you want something to put your feet on, Benny?" she asked
anxiously, with that hunger for servitude with which women persecute
their male sick.
The invalid looked down at his feet helplessly, and then turned his eyes
toward the stretch of barley-stubble below the vineyard. A stack of
baled hay in the middle of the field cast a dense black shadow in the
afternoon sun.
"No, I guess not," he said absently. "Has Lawson sent any word about the
hay?"
"He said he'd come and look at it in a day or two."
Mrs. Wickersham stood behind her son, smoothing the loose wrinkles from
his coat with her hard hand. He was scarcely more than a boy, and his
illness had given him that pathetic gauntness which comes from the
wasting away of youth and untried strength.
"I wanted a little money before the twenty-fourth," he said, feeling one
feverish hand with the other awkwardly. "I can't seem to get used to
being sick. I thought sure I'd be ready for the hay-baling."
"The doctor says you're doing real well, Benny," asserted the woman
bravely. "I guess if it ain't very much you want, we can manage it."
"It's only five dollars."
Mrs. Wickersham went back to the kitchen and resumed her dish-washing.
Her daughter came out of the pantry where she had been putting away the
cups. She was taller than her mother, and looked down at her with
patronizing deference.
"Do you think that new medicine's helping Ben any?" she asked in an
undertone.
"Oh, I don't know, Emmy," the poor woman broke out desperately;
"sometimes I think his cough's a little looser, but he's getting to have
that same look about the eyes that your pa had that last winter"--Mrs.
Wickersham left her work abruptly, and went and stood in the doorway
with her back toward her daughter.
The girl took up her mother's deserted task, and went on with it
soberly.
"Shall I put on some potatoes for yeast?" she asked, after a little
heart-breaking silence.
"Yes, I guess you'd better," answered the older woman; "there's only the
best part of a loaf left, and Benny hadn't ought to eat fresh bread."
She came back to her work, catching eagerly at the homely suggestion of
duty.
"I'll finish them," she said, taking a dish out of her daughter's hand;
"you brighten up the fire and get the potatoes."
The girl walked away without looking up. When she came into the room a
little later with an armful of wood, Mrs. Wickersham was standing by the
stove.
"Emmy," she said in a whisper, taking hold of her daughter's dress and
drawing her toward her, "don't tell your brother I had to pay cash to
the balers. It took all the ready money I had in the house: I'd rather
he didn't know it."
"What's the matter, mother?" asked the girl, looking steadily into the
older woman's worried face.
"He wants five dollars next week," whispered Mrs. Wickersham, nodding
toward the door; "I hain't got it."
The girl threw the wood into the woodbox and stood gazing intently at
it. She had a quaint, oval face, and the smooth folds of her dark hair
made a triangle of her high forehead. Two upright lines formed
themselves in the triangle as she gazed. She turned away without
speaking, and took a pan from the shelf and went into the shed-room for
potatoes. When she came back, she walked to her mother's side, and said
in a low voice,--
"You needn't worry about the money any more, mother. I'll get it for
Ben."
"_You_, Em!"
"Yes; I'm going over to Bassett's raisin-camp to pick grapes."
"Oh, I don't think I'd do _that_, Emmy!"
"Why, what's wrong about it?"
"There's nothing wrong about it, of course; I didn't mean that. Only it
seems so--so kind of strange. None of the women folks in our family's
ever done anything of that kind."
"Then the women folks in our family will have to begin. I can get a
dollar a day. The Burnham girls went, and they're as good as we are. I'm
going, anyway,"--the girl's red lips shut themselves in a narrow line.
"Oh, they're all _good_ enough, Emmy," protested Mrs. Wickersham; "it's
nothing against them, only it's going out to work. You know the way men
folks feel--I don't know what your brother will say."
"You can tell him I've set my heart on it. They have great fun over
there. He wanted me to go camping to the beach with the same crowd of
young folks this summer. I'll not stay at night, mother; I'll walk home
every evening. It's no use saying anything, I'm going."
"Is Steve Elliott at the camp?" asked Benny, when his mother told him.
"She didn't say anything about him, Benny, but I suppose he is. Why?"
"I guess that explains it," said the invalid, smiling wistfully.