Mothers to Men. Zona Gale

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      "About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her name.

      "'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian name as soon as his back was turned, I call it,' said some. 'My land, I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. My opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'

      "But I guess Insley had more confidence.

      "'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.

      "'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job you're talking about, you know.'

      "'It's the big job,' says Insley, quiet.

      "Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her back.

      "'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me—I'll always do for chinkin' in. I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be up till day after to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'

      "She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger, much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a travelling man.

      "Here, though, was a stranger—and such a stranger. She was so unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside—a star, so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud clinging about that brightness—a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.

      "'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.

      "Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.

      "'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'

      "'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in. I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'

      "'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please, Robin, and meet these people.'

      "The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule, where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there against the big, black background of the night and the village, while Mis' Emmons presented her.

      "'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me to-day—for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'

      "It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us. She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned a little inside the frame of the doorway and put out her hand to us all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain, was warm.

      "'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'

      "'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again—a sweet grave, not a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from each other as soup from hot water.

      "'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'

      "We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us? 'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.

      "We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the shining lamp path was setting a child—a little boy, with a paper bag in his arms.

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      "Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping. And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was waiting for anybody in particular.

      "Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:—

      "'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'

      "'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.

      "'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.

      "'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.

      "She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she lifted up his chin, gentle.

      "'Wake up and look at me,' she says.

      "The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace tender.

      "'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.

      "'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.

      "'But who are you—where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't you—in this town?'

      "The child shook his head positive.

      "'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'

      "Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.

      "'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'

      "'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must go with whoever wants me to go with 'em. Do—do you?'

      "At СКАЧАТЬ