George never forgot this trust for one moment. The plans he made in life were all for his mother’s sake--his future was to be spent in her service. He wanted to come out of school at the time of his father’s death, and try by all manner of little industries to help take care of the household, but his mother was too wise to permit this. She developed a strength of mind and of body for which no one who saw her pink-and-white prettiness,--the prettiness of a girl still, despite all her years of married life,--would have given her credit.
She saw clearly that if her boy’s education stopped at thirteen, he would be held in check all his life by his own ignorance--he must be drudge always, and never master. So she made him go to school three years longer.
How she lived and kept up her refined little home puzzled all lookers-on, and indeed she hardly knew herself. She lived simply; she was busy from morning till night. She sewed for one neighbor, she helped another through some season of sickness, she taught a naughty child who had worn out its welcome at school, but who could not wear out Mrs. Graham’s sweet patience,--and all these things helped. It is true, it was very often hard work to compass the simple necessaries of life, but she struggled on bravely.
When George was sixteen he should come out of school, well trained, she hoped, for a business man, and then things would be so much easier. With this hope in view, she never repined. She kept her strength of soul and her sweetness of temper, her fresh beauty and her fresh heart. She kept, too, her boy’s adoration,--an adoration which was, as I said, the romance of his life.
When the days began to grow so dark for George Graham, it was of his mother that he thought. So far he had no ambitions, no hopes, that were not centred in her. What if this growing shadow about him was to increase until all was dark, until dense night shut him in,--a night through whose blackness no star of hope could shine? What if he must be no help to his mother, but only a burden on her for ever, a burden lasting through heaven only knew how many helpless years?
He rebelled against such a fate madly. He stretched out his hands toward heaven, he lifted the dumb prayer of his darkening eyes, but no help came.