II

What!  Silver tree?  She hadn’t realized how the time had been flying.  But there was the sawmill.  She could hear the whir and buzz!  And there was the old livery-stable, and the place where farm implements were sold, and the little harness shop jammed in between;—­and there, to convince her no mistake had been made, was the lozenge of grass with “Silvertree” on it in white stones.  Then, in a second, the station appeared with the busses backed up against it, and beyond them the familiar surrey with a woman in it with yearning eyes.

Kate, the specialized student of psychology, the graduate with honors, who had learned to note contrasts and weigh values, forgot everything (even her umbrella) and leaped from the train while it was still in motion.  Forgotten the honors and degrees; the majors were mere minor affairs; and there remained only the things which were from the beginning.

She and her mother sat very close together as they drove through the familiar village streets.  When they did speak, it was incoherently.  There was an odor of brier roses in the air and the sun was setting in a “bed of daffodil sky.”  Kate felt waves of beauty and tenderness breaking over her and wanted to cry.  Her mother wanted to and did.  Neither trusted herself to speak, but when they were in the house Mrs. Barrington pulled the pins out of Kate’s hat and then Kate took the faded, gentle woman in her strong arms and crushed her to her.

“Your father was afraid he wouldn’t be home in time to meet you,” said Mrs. Barrington when they were in the parlor, where the Dresden vases stood on the marble mantel and the rose-jar decorated the three-sided table in the corner.  “It was just his luck to be called into the country.  If it had been a really sick person who wanted him, I wouldn’t have minded, but it was only Venie Sampson.”

“Still having fits?” asked Kate cheerfully, as one glad to recognize even the chronic ailments of a familiar community.

“Well, she thinks she has them,” said Mrs. Barrington in an easy, gossiping tone; “but my opinion is that she wouldn’t be troubled with them if only there were some other way in which she could call attention to herself.  You see, Venie was a very pretty girl.”

“Has that made her an invalid, mummy?”

“Well, it’s had something to do with it.  When she was young she received no end of attention, but some way she went through the woods and didn’t even pick up a crooked stick.  But she got so used to being the center of interest that when she found herself growing old and plain, she couldn’t think of any way to keep attention fixed on her except by having these collapses.  You know you mustn’t call the attacks ‘fits.’  Venie’s far too refined for that.”

Kate smiled broadly at her mother’s distinctive brand of humor.  She loved it all—­Miss Sampson’s fits, her mother’s jokes; even the fact that when they went out to supper she sat where she used in the old days when she had worn a bib beneath her chin.