It was in the cool of a summer evening that I saw the child leaning over
the railing of the river bridge and looking through her tears toward the
opposite side of the stream. I knew intuitively that the tears in her
eyes were sad ones, because sorrowful tears seem to stand in pools and
only gush out at intervals. Tears of joy well out as fast as generated,
for the eyelids stiffen under the influence of gladness and eject the
tears automatically. In sorrow the eyes seem to recede and the eye-lids
grow flabby and helpless, and the tears stand in pools around the corners
of the eyes, as though lacking the courage to gush out and part with the
aching heart beneath.
“Are you sick, little girl?” I asked. She tried to answer, but the words
would not come. She only sobbed, and the pool of tears gushed out under
the new disturbance and ran down her pale cheeks. “Don’t talk, if you
don’t care to, child, but if you are in trouble I may be able to assist
you. Have you a home?”
“Oh yes, sir!” she burst out, as though the word “home” opened the door
to her heart. “My home is far out over this river and beyond those hills
you see in the west!”
“And why are you here?” I asked kindly.
“Oh, I’m out at service. I’m working in Sheriff Barker’s kitchen, helping
the misses with her work. I’m earning my own living, besides giving some
money to papa for the other children. There’s so many of us, you see.”
“How old are you?” I asked, not out of curiosity, but out of sympathy.
“Oh, I’m twelve years old! There are four younger than me, and three
older. We all go out at ten years and rustle for ourselves.”
“Dear God, what an age! What trials for such little bodies! But what were
you crying about when I first came here?” I asked.
“Oh, sir, I was so homesick! I often get that way through the day, and
at evening I come out here to the bridge and look out toward the dear old
home and cry to see the children, and it really makes me feel better. It
takes that heavy feeling out of my heart and I can look away ahead and
feel hopeful.”
“What is your father’s name?” I asked.
“Papa’s name is John Deer—I’m Jennie. Mamma calls me Jean, and the boys
call me Jen. The Barkers call me Jane. I like to be called Jean, because
that’s what mamma calls me. I love my mamma so well, so well! and my
heart is aching to see Willie and Bessie and the others tonight!”
“Why, Jean, I know your father well, and I remember your mother. I worked
in the lumber woods with your father in 1884. He would write letters to
his sweetheart every Sunday, and every Wednesday he would always get one
from his girl. How glad he would be after reading her letters. She was a
little school teacher in those old days.”
“Go on,” she cried. “Oh, I love to hear you talk of my papa and mamma as
they were before they were married! I wonder if they loved each other
like the people we read about in the story books?”
“I believe they did, Jean. At least your father loved Carrie Green just
as fondly as young men love in story books. I had a best girl, too, in
those days, and we often spoke of them, and what we would do after we got
married.”
“And did you marry your best girl, too?” she eagerly inquired.
“No, Jean,” I said, and a wave of memory flashed over my mind and I
paused to look down through that memory to the vista away off in the
distance.
“Did you quarrel?” she asked, her eyes showing how much she was
interested.
“No, Jean—she died.”
“You poor man!” she cried. “Did it almost break your heart? Oh, I can
feel all you felt when your sweetheart died, for there can be no greater
sorrow than to be homesick—to wish so earnestly for the ones you love
best on earth—to long for your mother’s breast—that you may lay your
aching head down and close your eyes and think only of how dear she is to
you. Oh, I’m so glad you told me of your dead sweetheart, for you know
how it feels to be sad and sorrowful, and can sympathize with a homesick
girl!”