Her eyes
were restless and expectant; she listened eagerly to
every sound. A step is at the door, a hand is on the
latch. The old woman rises uncertainly, a great hope in
her eyes--it is the letter--the letter at last. The door
opens, and the old woman falls cowering and moaning, and
wringing her hands before the man who enters. It is the
officer!
Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands.
"Oh God be merciful, be merciful," she sobbed.
Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was
passing through his wife's mind, was out in the machine
house tightening up the screws and bolts in the binders,
getting ready for the harvest. The barley was whitening
already.
The nurse's letter had disturbed him. He tried to laugh
at himself--the idea of his boxing up those weeds to send
to anybody. Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly
was. By George, it is strange what will please people.
He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses,
how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the
sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to
his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not
laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And
Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her
yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of
the pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch
up a horse for him as quick as anybody.
"I kind o' wish now that I had given her something--it
would have pleased her so--some little thing," he added
hastily.
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