When she made her way back through the woods, the moon was sinking, and
the shadows had grown heavy. As she reached the bars again, on her
homeward track, she stopped suddenly, and her face broke into smiling
at the pungent fragrance rising from the bruised herbage beneath her
feet. She stooped and gathered one telltale, homely weed, mixed as it
was with the pasture grass. "Pennyr'yal," she said happily, and felt
the richness of being.

When Old Lady Lamson had ironed her shirts and put them away again, all
hot and sweet from the fire, it was five o'clock, and the birds had
long been trying to drag creation up from sleep, to sing with them the
wonders of the dawn. At six, she had her cup of tea, and when, at
eight, her son drove into the yard, she came placidly to the side door
to meet him, her knitting in her hands.

"Well, if I ain't glad!" called David. "I couldn't git it out o' my
mind somethin' 'd happened to you. Stella's goin' to be all right, they
think, but nothin' will do but Mary must stay a spell. Do you s'pose
you an' I could keep house a week or so, if I do the heft o' the work?"

Old Lady Lamson's eyes took on the look which sometimes caused her son
to inquire suspiciously, "Mother, what you laughin' at?"

"I guess we can, if we try hard enough," she said, soberly, rolling up
her yarn. "Now you come in, an' I'll git you a bite o' somethin'
t'eat."