"
Jonas wakened a little from his mental swoon. Life seemed warmer, more
tangible, again.
"Law, do go," said the mother soothingly. "She don't want the whole
township tramplin' up there to eye over her chiny. Make her as nervous
as a witch. Here's the ha'-bushel basket, an' some paper to put between
'em. You go, Jonas, an' I'll clear off the shelves."
So Jonas, whether he was tired of guiding the impulses of his own
unquiet mind, or whether he had become a child again, glad to yield to
the maternal, as we all do in our grief, took the basket and went. He
stood by, still like a child, while this comfortable woman put the
china on the shelves, speaking warmly, as she worked, of the pretty
curving of the cups, and her belief that the pitcher was "one you could
pour out of." She stayed on at the house, and Jonas, through his
sickness of the mind, lay back upon her soothing will as a baby lies in
its mother's arms. But the china was never used, even when he had come
to his normal estate, and bought and sold as before. The mother's
prescience was too keen for that.
Here in this ground are the ambiguities of life carried over into that
other state, its pathos and its small misunderstandings. This was a
much-married man whose last spouse had been a triple widow.
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