“She’s bound to know some day,” said Bob.
“She’s bound to, sure,” echoed Thad with a groan. “But my God a’mighty ain’t either of us got nerve to tell her _now_. If she hadn’t been goin’ to school to Saint Jimmy these last five years--I mean if she was like she would a-been with jest me an’ you to bring her up, it might not a-mattered. But now--now it’s goin’ to be plain hell for her when she finds out.”
“Won’t even let us work on Sundays ’cause it ain’t the right way for Christians like us to do. We’d ought to a-told long ago, that’s what we ought to a-done.”
“Sure, we ought to told her,” cried Thad, “jest like we’d ought to done a lot of things we ain’t. But mournin’ over what ought to been done ain’t payin’ us nothin’. What’re we _goin’_ to do, that’s what we got to figger out. The gal’s got to be told.”
“Yes,” returned Bob. “An’ she’s got to be told ’fore some sneakin’ varmint beats us to it an’ tells her for true what me an’ you are only suspicionin’. How’ll you ever do it?”
“How’ll _I_ ever do it?” shrilled Thad. “Holy Cats! I can’t--How’ll you ever do it yourself?”
“I can’t neither--an’ by smoke, I won’t.”
Wise Mother Burton came to wonder, sometimes, if Saint Jimmy’s teaching was not more a matter of love than even he perhaps realized.
Doctor Jimmy Burton and his mother spent their first year in Arizona at Tucson and Oracle. But when they were satisfied that Jimmy could live if he gave up his too strenuous professional work and remained in the Southwest, and that if he did not follow that course he would as surely die, they built the little white house on the mountain side at Juniper Springs, above the Cañada del Oro. As Jimmy explained, “it was quite necessary, under the circumstances, that they live where they could see out.”
It was during that first summer in Oracle that the neighbors began to speak of his tender care of his mother, for, even in those days when he was too ill to do more than think, his thoughts were all for her. And so lovingly did he try to shield her from the pain of his suffering, so cheerfully did he accustom her to the thought of the utter hopelessness of his professional future, and so courageously, for her sake, did he accept the pitifully small portion that life offered him, that the people marveled at the spirit of the man. It was a question, they sometimes said, with a touch of sincere reverence in their voices, if Doctor Burton needed his mother as much as the doctor’s mother needed him. But Jimmy and his mother knew that the truth of the matter was they needed each other.