“You wa’n’t thinkin’ of moving to Bay-port?” He asked the question humbly, but with a kind of mild obstinacy that checked the flow of talk.
“That’s what we wanted to ask you, father.”
The boy had raised his voice a little, as if speaking to a person who was a little deaf.
The old man sat down his tea-cup and rubbed his finger thoughtfully along his chin. “I don’t b’lieve I ’d better go,” he said slowly. He shook his head. “I don’t see how I can go nohow.”
The boy glanced swiftly at his mother. A little line had fallen between her eyes. The slower processes of the man’s mind were a nervous horror to her quick-moving one.
She leaned forward a little. “We want to go, Caleb, because it will be better for John,” she said slowly.
He nodded imperturbably. “Yes, it ’ll be better for the boy.” He glanced at him kindly. “I know all about it’s being better for the boy. We talked about it last winter, and if you ’d made up your minds to go then, I would n’t ’a’ said a word--not a word.”
“But it will be better now--easier to go. There is n’t any other difference from what there was last winter.”
“Yes, they’s a difference,” said the old man slowly. “I did n’t hev my squashes then.”
“But you have n’t got them now,” said John. “They won’t be ripe for months--”
“Six weeks,” interrupted the old man solemnly. “They are just a-settin ’.”
“But we can buy squashes in Bayport, Caleb.”
He looked at her mildly. “Yes, we can buy ’em, but will they be them squashes!--You know they won’t be, and Johnny knows they won’t.” His look changed a little to severity. “When a man’s done what I have for them squashes--Why, I dug that ground and I fertilized it, and I’ve weeded and watered and fussed and tended them all spring, and when a man ’s done that much, a man wants to _eat ’em!_” It was a long speech for the old man, and he chewed in gloomy silence.
The man looked up again and saw them shining at him. “I want to go, Johnny,” he said, and his thick lips trembled a little, “I want to do what’s best for you. You know it and your mother knows it.” He was looking at her humbly.
“Yes, Caleb, I know.” The line had vanished from her eyes. Dear old Caleb!--How slow he was and how right, always, in the end!
“How would it do, father, if we had the things sent down to us?” said the boy.