Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/101

Rh smoking and thinking. Presently Billy lifted his head, and his eyes went wide and wild, like a grief-stricken woman's, round the room, and his hands rested loosely on the arms of the chair. "To think I'm sittin' here in mother's chair like this t'night, Tom!—like this t'night——"

Tom puffed once or twice. "Poor mother," he muttered, "she didn't last long arter you went, Billy—she didn't lay long, she warn't one of that sort. An' we didn't keep her long, not more'n two days. Work slack, wages low, an' Rose down with little Tommy. Poor mother! all her thoughts were o' you, Billy."

Billy's hopeless eyes went round the room again. Sideboard, china shepherd and shepherdess, crochet-work, shells, coral, model of Dover under glass (very like the real Dover, with toy houses and white and vivid green), chairs with antimacassars, and holland covers, and father on the wall to the left of fireplace, and mother on the wall to right. Billy as a baby, Billy as a boy. Tom as a boy, Billy and Tom together as boys. Jane as a baby, Jane as a girl, Jane and Willie and Tom as children. Aunt Caroline, Uncle Will, and the rest about. Billy's head went slowly down. Tom stood by the chair, laid his hand on his head and ruffled it, as he'd done in his best moods when a boy. The head went right down on the hollow of the arm, as it had done in grief when a boy—the hand stuck up in mute appeal. Tom laid his pipe on the table, hurriedly for him, and took that hand in his own great hard one.