She was humming an old hymn as she rocked.
'Sold the farm, mother,' said David.
She stopped singing but made no answer. In the dusk, as we sat
down, I saw her face leaning upon her hand. Over the hills and out
of the fields around us came many voices - the low chant in the
stubble, the baying of a hound in the far timber, the cry of the tree
toad - a tiny drift of odd things (like that one sees at sea) on the
deep eternal silence of the heavens. There was no sound in the
room save the low creaking of the rocker in which Elizabeth sat.
After all the going, and corning, and doing, and saying of many
years here was a little spell of silence and beyond lay the untried
things of the future. For me it was a time of reckoning.
'Been hard at work here all these years, mother,' said David.
'Oughter be glad t' git away.'
'Yes,' said she sadly, 'it's been hard work. Years ago I thought I
never could stan' it. But now I've got kind o' used t' it.'
'Time ye got used t' pleasure 'n comfort,' he said. 'Come kind o'
hard, at fast, but ye mus' try t' stan' it.
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