Mothers to Men. Zona Gale
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can't tell,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'
"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may be looking for him.'
"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.
"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'
"'I'd love it,' says the girl.
"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.
"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed up alarming.
"'What is it—what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that little stillness Christopher told us:—
"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right through that hole. And it's chokin' me.'
"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough—we see somebody somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.
"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says; and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make up for not offering before. But I think really what was the matter with me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.
"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.
"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the passenger.'
"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start all over again and be something else, sweeter.
"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top to bottom—the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and dark, for months on end.
"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.
"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she knew the Proudfits. 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known him since he was in knickerbockers.
"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.
"'Nobody,' Insley says—and his voice was always as smooth and round as wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'
"And, 'I did walked all that way—in that rain,' says Christopher, sleepy, in his automobile's collar.
III
"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze in the grate—not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of something.
"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front of the door and looked round him.
"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw such a hearty place.'
"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins on business. Mis' Emmons was the first kind, and it was real contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute. She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.
"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it for ten cents—yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the spectrum. What should we do without the rainbow? And what in the world am I going to put on that child?'
"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood, dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with that same little way of touching him, like loving.
"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can find in the pantry.'
"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his head turned away and without saying anything.
"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.
"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A good-looking talking man I ain't afraid of, because I can either admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out, and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley, besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that all the time since I last saw you, and how do you keep it up?
"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him—and had give him his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes that could see considerably more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice, ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?
"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.
"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows flickering up.
"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good deal towards folks.'
"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.
"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'
"'I thought you did,' he says grave.
"Then