When she saw Jerome she stopped short and screwed up her face before him as if to receive a blow.  She did not ask a question.

“I met the team comin’ home,” said Jerome.

Still his mother said nothing, but kept that cringing face before a coming blow.

“Father wa’n’t on it,” said Jerome.

Still his mother waited.

“I hitched the horse,” said Jerome, “and then I went up to the ten-acre lot, and I looked everywhere.  He ain’t there.”

Suddenly Ann Edwards seemed to fall back upon herself before his eyes.  Her head sank helplessly; she slipped low in her chair.

Jerome ran to the water-pail, dipped out some water, and sprinkled his mother’s face.  Then he rubbed her little lean hands with his hard, boyish palm.  He had seen his mother faint before.  In fact, he had been all prepared for it now.

Presently she began to gasp and struggle feebly, and he knew she was coming to.  “Feel better?” he asked, in a loud voice, as if she were miles away; indeed, he had a feeling that she was.  “Feel better, mother?”

Mrs. Edwards raised herself.  “Your—­father has fell down and died,” she said.  “There needn’t anybody say anything else.  Wipe this water off my face.  Get a towel.”  Jerome obeyed.

“There needn’t anybody say anything else,” repeated his mother.

“I guess they needn’t, either,” assented Jerome, coming with the towel and wiping her face gently.  “I’d like to hear anybody,” he added, fiercely.

“He’s fell down—­and died,” said his mother.  She made sounds like sobs as she spoke, but there were no tears in her eyes.

“I s’pose I ought to go an’ take the horse out,” said Jerome.

“Well.”

“I’ll send Elmira in; she’s holdin’ him.”

“Well.”

Jerome lighted a candle first, for it was growing dark, and went out.  “You go in and stay with mother,” he said to Elmira, “an’ don’t you go to cryin’ an’ makin’ her worse—­she’s been faintin’ away.  Any tea in the house?”

“No,” said the little girl, trying to control her quivering face.

“Make her some hot porridge, then—­she’d ought to have something.  You can do that, can’t you?”

Elmira nodded; she dared not speak for fear she should cry.

“Go right in, then,” said Jerome; and she obeyed, keeping her face turned away.  Her childish back looked like an old woman’s as she entered the door.

Jerome unharnessed the horse, led him into the barn, fed him, and drew some water for him from the well.  When he came out of the barn, after it was all done, he saw Doctor Prescott’s chaise turning into the yard.  The doctor and Jake Noyes were in it.  When the chaise stopped, Jerome went up to it, bobbed his head and scraped his foot.  A handsome, keenly scowling face looked out of the chaise at him.  Doctor Seth Prescott was over fifty, with a smooth-shaven face as finely cut as a woman’s, with bright blue eyes under bushy brows, and a red scratch-wig.  Before years and snows and rough winds had darkened and seamed his face, he had been a delicately fair man.  “Has he come yet?” he demanded, peremptorily.