Four times this week he's not been home, Mosher. I can't help it,
I--I get crazy with worry."
A sudden, almost a simian old-age seemed to roll, like a cloud that can
thunder, across Sara's face. She was suddenly very small and no little
old. Veins came out on her brow and upon the backs of her hands, and
Mosher, depressed with an unconscious awareness, was looking into the
tired, cold, watery eyes of the fleet woman who had been his.
"Why, Sara!" he said, and came around the table to let her head wilt in
unwonted fashion against his coat. "Mamma!"
"I'm tired, Mosher." She said her words almost like a gush of warm blood
from the wound of her mouth. "I'm tired from keeping up and holding in.
I have felt so sure for these last four years that we have saved him
from his--his wildness--and now, to begin all over again, I--I 'ain't
got the fight left in me, Mosher."
"You don't have to have any fight in you, Mamma. 'Ain't you got a
husband and a son to fight for you?"
"Sometimes I think, except for the piece of my heart I left lying back
there, that there are worse agonies than even massacres.
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