He had distressed and
even frightened me, but he went on calmly smoking and appeared not to
be listening to me, and as he refused to speak I at last burst out:
"How do you know? Why do you say you know?"
At last he spoke. "Listen. I was once a boy too, and I know that a boy
of fourteen can understand things as well as a man. I was an only
child, and my mother was a widow, and I was more than all the world to
her, and she was more than everything else to me. We were alone
together in the world--we two. Then she died, and what her loss was to
me--how can I say it?--how could you understand? And after she was
taken away and buried, I said: 'She is not dead, and wherever she now
is, in heaven or in purgatory, or in the sun, she will remember and
come to me and comfort me.' When it was dark I went out alone and sat
at the end of the house, and spent hours waiting for her. 'She will
surely come,' I said, 'but I don't know whether I shall see her or
not. Perhaps it will be just a whisper in my ear, perhaps a touch of
her hand on mine, but I shall know that she is with me.' And at last,
worn out with waiting and watching, I went to my bed and said she will
come to-morrow. And the next night and the next it was the same.
Sometimes I would go up the ladder, always standing against the gable
so that one could go up, and standing on the roof, look out over the
plain and see where our horses were grazing.
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