‘Sister, you know mother’s name is Berthe. I don’t know if I ought to get B for Berthe, or M for Mother.’
Lena patted his bristly head. ‘I’d get the B, Chrissy. It will please her for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now.’
That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three reds and three blues. When the neighbour came in to say that it was time to start, Lena wound Chris’s comforter about his neck and turned up his jacket collar—he had no overcoat—and we watched him climb into the wagon and start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the windy street, Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woollen glove. ‘I get awful homesick for them, all the same,’ she murmured, as if she were answering some remembered reproach.
VI
WINTER COMES DOWN
