Did her love for Ivory rest
partly on a sense of vocation?--a profound, inarticulate divining
of his vast need of her? He was so strong, yet so weak because of
the yoke he bore, so bitterly alone in his desperate struggle
with life, that her heart melted like wax whenever she thought of
him. When she contemplated the hidden mutiny in her own heart,
she was awestruck sometimes at the almost divine patience of
Ivory's conduct as a son.
"How is your mother this summer, Ivory?" she asked as they sat
down on the meeting-house steps waiting for Jed Morrill to open
the door.
"There is little change in her from year to year, Waitstill.--By
the way, why don't we get out of this afternoon sun and sit in
the old graveyard under the trees? We are early and the choir
won't get here for half an hour.--Dr. Perry says that he does not
understand mother's
case in the least, and that no one but some great Boston
physician could give a proper opinion on it; of course, that is
impossible at present."
They sat down on the grass underneath one of the elms and
Waitstill took off her hat and leaned back against the
tree-trunk.
"Tell me more," she said; "it is so long since we talked together
quietly and we have never really spoken of your mother.
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