And I bought six pairs lately that I liked awfully well,
and I hated to see them die.... They're just little holes."
"I'll get them and do them as soon as we're through dinner," she
promised. "Won't your mother mind?"
"She'll be delighted," John promised sincerely. "But she hasn't
them. I have."
Accordingly, after dinner Joy demanded them, and John produced them,
while she got out her mending-basket, something he had never
suspected her of possessing, he told her.
She sat down under the lamp with her work, tying on the little
sewing-apron Mrs. Hewitt had given her the day before.
"Why, they scarcely have holes at all," she marveled. "I can do lots
more than these."
"There are lots more," said John rather mournfully. But he did not
feel particularly mournful. He was absorbed in the picture she made
sitting there by the lamp, near the fire, her red mouth smiling to
itself a little, and her black lashes shadowing her cheeks as her
hands moved deftly at her work. John himself, on the other side of
the fire, had a paper across his knees, but he forgot to read it,
watching her. She seemed to turn the place into a home, sitting there
quietly happy, swiftly setting her tiny, accurately woven stitches.
John's mother was an adorable playmate, but responsibilities were,
to her, something to laugh about. She had always declared that John
should have been her father, not her son; and he had always tried to
fill the role as best he could.
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