Mothers to Men. Zona Gale

I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'

      "'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.

      "'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'

      "I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper; and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where the rest was.

      "The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat that you'd forgot about—cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your own.

      "'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley, can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; 'can you make toast? People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice—what do you want to cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr. Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl, how Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it, I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything down.'

      "They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up to Mis' Emmons with the paper.

      "'Read that,' I says.

      "She done so, out loud—the scrawlin', downhill message:—

      "'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.

      "'resp, his father.

      "'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat gets sore awful easy.'

      "When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while the swamping was going on.

      "'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did you ever hear of anything—well, I wish somebody would tell me what we're going to do.'

      "'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first—that he's here with you.'

      "Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.

      "'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'

      "We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten to, like you will. Mis' Emmons was the first to get back inside the minute.

      "'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'

      "Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.