"
"Darling! We've got each other fast."
"Thanks be, dear! My! You don't know the times I've sneaked in and set
in this room when you was away. And even now, if you're go'n' to be
out pretty late, I bring in my work 'most always when your pa's out. I
generally slip back to my room before you come in, because I know you
think I oughtn't to be sittin' up. You mightn't just understand that
'twas because this is my only real home."
"Your only real home? Why, Mother!"
"The rest of the house is so big--and so _awful_ new-fashioned and
grand. Not like me a bit," she apologized meekly--but not with the
flurried meekness of her apologies to Peter senior. "Here you've saved
all my dear old things I had in the days before everything was big. I
never _can_ get used to it, and I never will now. It's the bigness, I
guess, that's seemed--somehow--to take your pa and Ena away from
me--long ago. But I've got you. And you let me come here. So I am
happy. I'm a real happy woman, Petie. And I want you to be happy the
way you used to be--or some better way, not all restless like you are
now. I guess if there was some one you loved different from me you
wouldn't make a new life for yourself without a little place in it for
mother, would you--just a weenty little place I could come and live in
sometimes for a while?"
"I'd want you in it always," said Peter.
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