I
decided to trust to this, so one day after I had learned his
whistle (every boy of enterprise invents a whistle of his own) from
boys who had been his comrades, I secretly put on a suit of his
clothes, dark grey they were, with little spots, and they fitted me
many years afterwards, and thus disguised I slipped, unknown to the
others, into my mother's room. Quaking, I doubt not, yet so
pleased, I stood still until she saw me, and then - how it must
have hurt her! 'Listen!' I cried in a glow of triumph, and I
stretched my legs wide apart and plunged my hands into the pockets
of my knickerbockers, and began to whistle.
She lived twenty-nine years after his death, such active years
until toward the end, that you never knew where she was unless you
took hold of her, and though she was frail henceforth and ever
growing frailer, her housekeeping again became famous, so that
brides called as a matter of course to watch her ca'ming and
sanding and stitching: there are old people still, one or two, to
tell with wonder in their eyes how she could bake twenty-four
bannocks in the hour, and not a chip in one of them. And how many
she gave away, how much she gave away of all she had, and what
pretty ways she had of giving it! Her face beamed and rippled with
mirth as before, and her laugh that I had tried so hard to force
came running home again. I have heard no such laugh as hers save
from merry children; the laughter of most of us ages, and wears out
with the body, but hers remained gleeful to the last, as if it were
born afresh every morning.
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