Saturday morning she and David watched the hill road from nine o'clock
until stage-time. From the green bench under the poplar, the tavern
porch on Main Street could just be seen; and at a little before twelve
Jonas's lean, shambling nags drew up before it. Mrs. Richie was very
pale. David, fretting at the dullness of the morning, asked her some
question, but She did not hear him, and he pulled at her skirt. "Does
everything grow?"
"Yes, dear, yes; I suppose so."
"How big is everything when it begins to grow?"
"Oh, dear little boy, don't ask so many questions!"
"When you began to grow, how big were you? Were you an inch big?"
"If he has come," she said breathlessly, "the stage will get up here
in fifteen minutes!"
David sighed.
"Oh, why don't they start?" she panted; "what is the matter!"
"It's starting," David said.
"Come, David, hurry!" she cried. "We must be at the gate!" She took
his hand, and ran down the path to the gate in the hedge. As she stood
there, panting, she pressed her fingers hard on her lips; they must
not quiver before the child. She kept her watch in her hand. "It isn't
time yet to see them; it will take Jonas ten minutes to get around to
the foot of the hill."
Overhead the flicker of locust leaves cast checkering lights and
shadows on her white dress and across the strained anxiety of her
face. She kept her eyes on her watch, and the ten minutes passed in
silence. Then she went out into the road and looked down its length of
noon-tide sunshine; the stage was not in sight. "Perhaps," she
thought, "it would take twenty minutes to get to the foot of the hill?
I'll not look down the road for ten minutes more." After a while she
said faintly, "Is it--coming?"
"No'm," David assured her, "Mrs. Richie, what does God eat?"
There was no answer.
"Does he eat us?"
"No, of course not."
"Why not?"
Helena lifted her head, suddenly, "It would take twenty-five minutes--
I'm sure it would."
She got up and walked a little way down the road, David tagging
thoughtfully behind her. There was no stage in sight. "David, run down
the hill to the turn, and look."
The little boy, nothing loath, ran, at the turn he shook his head, and
called back, "No'm. Mrs. Richie, He must, 'cause there's nothing
goes to heaven but us. Chickens don't," he explained anxiously. But
she did not notice his alarm.