Short Stories
his mother's ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it
no longer rankled. Nothing mattered any more. Not even that.
"I know, ma, what you've ben plannin' for Will—keepin' him
in school to make a bookkeeper out of him. But it ain't no use,
I've quit. He's got to go to work."
"An' after I have brung you up the way I have," she wept,
starting to cover her head with the apron and changing her
mind.
"You never brung me up," he answered with sad kindliness.
"brung myself up, ma, an' I brung up Will. He's bigger'n me, an'
heavier, an' taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn't git enough
to eat. When he come along an' was a kid, I was workin' an'
earnin' grub for him too. But that's done with. Will can go to
work, same as me, or he can go to hell, I don't care which. I'm
tired. I'm goin' now. Ain't you goin' to say good-by?"
She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again,
and she was crying. He paused a moment in the doorway.
"I'm sure I done the best I knew how," she was sobbing.
He passed out of the house and down the street. A wan de-
light came into his face at the sight of the lone tree. "Jes' ain't go-
in' to do nothin'," he said to himself, half aloud, in a crooning
tone. He glanced wistfully up at the sky, but the bright sun daz-
zled and blinded him.
It was a long walk he took, and he did not walk fast. It took
him past the jute-mill. The muffled roar of the loom room came
to his ears, and he smiled. It was a gentle, placid smile. He hated
no one, not even the pounding, shrieking machines. There was
no bitterness in him, nothing but an inordinate hunger for rest.
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