“To be sure you’re hungry, child; and
I’ll have you your supper in half a minute,
as soon as I can rake the fire open. Lay down
on mother’s bed there, and rest while I’m
gettin’ ready for you. The baby won’t
wake, and I don’t care if she does.”
“I s’pose she’s grown a good deal.
But I am tired,” the boy said, stretching
himself out. “Me ‘n’ Benny run
all the way as soon as we come in sight of the crick,
and him ‘n’ Mis’ Hingston wanted
me to stay all night, but I wouldn’t. I
wanted to see you so much, mother.”
“Did Mr. Hingston come back with you? Or,
don’t tell me anything; don’t speak, till
you’ve had something to eat.”
“I woon’t, mother,” the boy promised,
and then he said, “But you ought to see Philadelphy,
mother. It’s twenty times as big as Wheeling,
Benny says, and all red brick houses and white marble
steps.” He was sitting up, and talking
now; his mother flew about in the lank linsey-woolsey
dress she had thrown over her nightgown in some unrealized
interval of her labors and had got the skillet of
bacon hissing over the coals.
“And to think,” she bleated in self-reproach,
“that I’ll have to give you rye
coffee! You know, Joey dear, there hain’t
very much cash about this house, and the store won’t
take truck for coffee. But with good cream in
it, the rye tastes ’most as good. Set up
to the table, now,” she bade him, when she had
put the rye coffee with the bacon and some warmed-up
pone on the leaf lifted from the wall.
She let the boy silently glut himself till he glanced
round between mouthfuls and said, “It all looks
so funny and little, in here, after Philadelphy.”
Then she said, “But you don’t say anything
about the New Jerusalem. Didn’t it come
down, after all?” She smiled, but sadly rather
than gladly in her skepticism.
“No, mother,” the boy answered solemnly.
Then after a moment he said, “I got something
to tell you, mother. But I don’t know whether
I hadn’t better wait till morning.”
“It’s most morning, now, Joey, I reckon,
if it ain’t already. That’s the twilight
comin’ in at the door. If you wouldn’t
rather get your sleep first—”
“No, I can’t sleep till I tell you, now.
It’s about the Good Old Man.”
“Did he—did he go up?” she
asked fearfully.
“No, mother, he didn’t. Some of them
say he was took up, but, mother, I believe
he was drownded!”
“Drownded?” the boy’s mother echoed.
“What do you mean, Joey? What makes you
believe he was drownded?”
“I seen him.”
“Seen him?”
“In the water. We was all walkin’
along the river bank, and some o’ the Flock
got to complainin’ because he hadn’t fetched
the New Jerusalem down yit, and wantin’ to know
when he was goin’ to do it, and sayin’
this was Philadelphy, and why didn’t he; and
Mr. Hingston he was tryin’ to pacify ’em,
and Mr. Enraghty he scolded ’em, and told ’em
to hesh up, or they’d be in danger of hell-fire;
but they didn’t, and the Good Old Man he begun
to cry. It was awful, mother.”
