"I've been wondering, Reuben," said his wife--"I've been wondering if
'twouldn't have been just as well if we'd taken some of the good things
while they was goin'--before we got too old to enjoy 'em."
"Yes--peanuts, for instance," acquiesced her husband ruefully.
In the Footsteps of Katy
Only Alma had lived--Alma, the last born. The other five, one after
another, had slipped from loving, clinging arms into the great Silence,
leaving worse than a silence behind them; and neither Nathan Kelsey nor
his wife Mary could have told you which hurt the more,--the saying of a
last good-bye to a stalwart, grown lad of twenty, or the folding of
tiny, waxen hands over a heart that had not counted a year of beating.
Yet both had fallen to their lot.
As for Alma--Alma carried in her dainty self all the love, hopes,
tenderness, ambitions, and prayers that otherwise would have been
bestowed upon six. And Alma was coming home.
"Mary," said Nathan one June evening, as he and his wife sat on the back
porch, "I saw Jim Hopkins ter-day. Katy's got home."
"Hm-m,"--the low rocker swayed gently to and fro,--"Katy's been ter
college, same as Alma, ye know."
"Yes; an'--an' that's what Jim was talkin' 'bout He was feelin' bad-
powerful bad.
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