She heard the boy pattering about in the kitchen, and, in spite of herself, the conviction that his father was out there, doing the morning task which had been his for so many years, was strong upon her.

When at length Jerome and Elmira came and told her breakfast was ready, and assisted her to rise and dress, she was as unquestioningly docile as if the relationship between them were reversed.  When she was seated in her chair she even forbore, as was her wont, to start immediately with sharp sidewise jerks of her rocker, but waited until her children pushed and drew her out into the next room, up to the breakfast-table.  There were, moreover, no sharp commands and chidings as to the household tasks that morning.  Jerome and Elmira did as they would, and their mother sat quietly and ate her breakfast.

Elmira kept staring at her mother, and then glancing uneasily at Jerome.  Her pretty face was quite pale that morning, and her eyes looked big.  She moved hesitatingly, or with sharp little runs of decision.  She went often to the window and stared down the road—­still looking for her father; for hope dies hard in youth, and she had words of triumph at the sight of him all ready upon her tongue.  Her mother’s strange demeanor frightened her, and made her almost angry.  She was too young to grasp any but the more familiar phases of grief, and revelations of character were to her revolutions.

She beckoned her brother out of the room the first chance she got, and questioned him.

“What ails mother?” she whispered, out in the woodshed, holding to the edge of his jacket and looking at him with piteous, scared eyes.

Jerome stood with his shoulders back, and seemed to look down at her from his superior height of courageous spirit, though she was as tall as he.

“She’s come to herself,” said Jerome.

“She wasn’t ever like this before.”

“Yes, she was—­inside.  She ain’t anything but a woman.  She’s come to herself.”

Elmira began to sob nervously, still holding to her brother’s jacket, not trying to hide her convulsed little face.  “I don’t care, she scares me,” she gasped, under her breath, lest her mother hear.  “She ain’t any way I’ve ever seen her.  I’m ‘fraid she’s goin’ to be crazy.  I’m dreadful ‘fraid mother’s goin’ to be crazy, Jerome.”

“No, she ain’t,” said Jerome.  “She’s just come to herself, I tell you.”

“Father’s dead and mother’s crazy, and Doctor Prescott has got the mortgage,” wailed Elmira, in an utter rebellion of grief.

Jerome caught her by the arm and pulled her after him at a run, out of the shed, into the cool spring morning air.  So early in the day, with no stir of life except the birds in sight or sound, the new grass and flowering branches and blooming distances seemed like the unreal heaven of a dream; and, indeed, nothing save their own dire strait of life was wholly tangible and met them but with shocks of unfamiliar things.