Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/94

  "Jessie thinks that even great shanty-men like you and Don and Hughie will not object to something better than bread and pork."

"Indeed, we will not," said Ranald, heartily.

Then Hughie suddenly remembered that he was actually leaving home, and climbing out of the jumper, he rushed at his mother.

"Oh, mother, good by!" he cried.

His mother stooped and put her arms about him. "Good by, my darling," she said, in a low voice; "I trust you to be a good boy, and, Hughie, don't forget your prayers."

Then came to Hughie, for the first time, the thought that had been in the mother's heart all the morning, that when night came he would lie down to sleep, for the first time in his life, without the nightly story and her good-night kiss.

"Mother," whispered the little lad, holding her tight about the neck, "won't you come, too? I don't think I like to go away."

He could have said no more comforting word, and the mother, whose heart had been sore enough with her first parting from her boy, was more than glad to find that the pain was not all on her side; so she kissed him again, and said, in a cheery voice: "Now have a good time. Don't trouble Ranald too much, and bring me back some sugar." Her last word braced the lad as nothing else could.

"Oh, mother, I'll bring you heaps!" he cried, and with the vision of what he would bring home again shining vividly before his eyes, he got through the