"Gardin!" cried Aunt Hetty. "Mercy on us, making garden the fore-part
of April. Where does he think he's living? Florida?"
"I don't believe he's exactly making garden," said Elly. "He just sort
of pokes around there, and looks at things. And sometimes he sits down
on the bench and just sits there. He's pretty old, I guess, and he
walks kind of tired, always."
"Does the other one?" asked Aunt Hetty.
This made Elly sit up, and say very loud, "No, indeedy!" She really
hadn't thought before how very untired Mr. Marsh always seemed. She
added, "No, the other one doesn't walk tired, nor he doesn't poke around
in the garden. He takes long tramps way back of the mountains, over
Burnham way."
"For goodness' sakes, what's he find up there?"
"He likes it. He comes over and borrows our maps and things to study,
and he gets Mother to tell him all about everything. He gets Touclé to
tell him about the back trails, too."
"Well, he's a smart one if he can get a word out of Touclé."
"Yes, he does. Everybody talks to him. You have to if he starts in.
He's very lively."
"Does he get you to talk?" asked Aunt Hetty, laughing at the idea.
"Well, some," stated Elly soberly. She did not say that Mr. Marsh always
seemed to her to be trying to get some secret out of her. She didn't
have any secret that she knew of, but that was the way he made her
feel. She dodged him mostly, when she could.
"What's the news from your father?"
"Oh, he's all right," said Elly. She fell to thinking of Father and
wishing he would come back.
"When's he going to get through his business, up there?"
"Before long, I guess. Mother said maybe he'd be back here next month."
Elly was aware that she was again not being talkative. She tried to
think of something to add. "I'm very much obliged for these cookies,"
she said. "They are awfully good."
"They're the kind your mother always liked, when she was your age," said
Aunt Hetty casually. "I remember how she used to sit right there on
Father's hair-trunk and eat them and watch me just like you now."
At this statement Elly could feel her thoughts getting bigger and longer
and higher, like something being opened out. "And the heaven was removed
as a scroll when it is rolled up." That sentence she'd heard in church
and never understood, and always wondered what was behind, what they had
seen when the scroll was rolled up. . . . Something inside her now seemed
to roll up as though she were going to see what was behind it. How much
longer time was than you thought! Mother had sat there as a little girl
. . . a little girl like her. Mother who was now grown-up and finished,
knowing everything, never changing, never making any mistakes. Why, how
could she have been a little girl! And such a short time ago that Aunt
Hetty remembered her sitting there, right there, maybe come in from
walking across that very meadow, and down those very rocks. What had
she been thinking about, that other little girl who had been Mother?
"Why" . . . Elly stopped eating, stopped breathing for a moment. "Why, she
herself would stop being a little girl, and would grow up and be a
Mother!" She had always known that, of course, but she had never felt
it till that moment. It made her feel very sober; more than sober,
rather holy. Yes, that was the word,--holy,--like the hymn. Perhaps some
day another little girl would sit there, and be just as surprised to
know that her mother had been really and truly a little girl too, and
would feel queer and shy at the idea, and all the time her mother had
been only Elly. But would she be Elly any more, when she was grown
up? What would have happened to Elly? And after that little girl,
another; and one before Mother; and back as far as you could see, and
forwards as far as you could see. It was like a procession, all half in
the dark, marching forward, one after another, little girls, mothers,
mothers and little girls, and then more . . . what for . . . oh, what
for?