I know now that we looked funny to you and you have amused yourself at our expense…. I don’t know why you thought it was such a joke, but I think you will live to see the day when you are sorry for it. It’s not good to make a joke of people who have liked you and tried to be your friends.”
“I know it’s not,” he said, and muttered: “I’m sorry for it now.”
“Still, I can’t believe,” the woman said, “that you are a boy who would wilfully bring sorrow and ruin to anyone who had never done you any harm…. The only reason I am saying this is for my daughter’s sake.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” he said. “I’m sorry now for acting as I have—but you know everything I’ve done. And I’ll not come back again. But I’d like to see her and tell her that I’m sorry before I go.”
“Yes,” the woman said, “I think you ought.”
She went out and a few minutes later the girl came down, entered the room, and he said good-bye to her. He tried to make amends to her with fumbling words, but she said nothing. She stood very still as he talked, almost rigid, her lips pressed tightly together, her hands clenched, winking back the tears.
“All right,” she said finally, giving him her hand. “I’ll say good-bye to you without hard feelings…. Some day… some day,” her voice choked and she winked furiously—“I hope you’ll understand—oh, good-bye!” she cried, and turned away abruptly. “I’m not mad at you any longer—and I wish you luck…. You know so many things, don’t you?—You’re so much smarter than we are, aren’t you?… And I’m sorry for you when I think of all you’ve got to learn… of what you’re going through before you do.”
“Good-bye,” he said.
He never saw any of them again, but he could not forget them. And as the years went on, the memory of all their folly, falseness, and hypocrisy was curiously altered and subdued and the memory that grew more vivid and dominant was of a little family, one of millions huddled below the immense and timeless skies that bend above us, lost in the darkness of nameless and unnumbered lives upon the lonely wilderness of life that is America, and banked together against these giant antagonists, for comfort, warmth, and love, with a courage and integrity that would not die and could not be forgotten.
