"I've learned to be humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying
to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried
to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you the cause
is the same."
There was a painful silence.
"I think sometimes, though," said Starke, "that God meant Jane and I
should not be useless in the world."
He put his hand almost reverently on the boy's head.
"Richard is ours, you know, to make what we will of. He will do a
different work in life from any engine. I try to think we have strength
enough saved out of our life to make him what we ought."
"You're right, Starke," said the Doctor, emphatically. "Some day, when
you and I have done with this long fight, we shall find that as many
privates as captains will have earned the cross of the Legion of Honor."
Miss Defourchet said nothing; the day did not please her. Jane, she
noticed, when evening came on, slipped up-stairs to brush her hair, and
put on a soft white shawl.
"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with
quite a flush in her cheek.
And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife
passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.
"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath
as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun
lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and
child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."
"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl
closer, and shivering.
Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on
the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in
all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him.
He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after
an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep The
question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She
watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? _Would_
he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping
through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray
beard,--his eyes, she saw, full of tears.
"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found
our true work."
"Yes, Joseph."
He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.
"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It
was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the
Legion of Honor--through him."
"God knows," she said.
After that they were silent a long while, They were thinking of Him who
had brought the little child to them.
* * * * *