City and town life -- Fiction; Foundlings -- Fiction
"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he
did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you
forget about his throat, will you?' he says.
'It--gets--sore--awful--easy....'
"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It
struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him
nor Chris thought of kissing each other--like neither one had brought
the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked
him--just like something away back in him knew how, without being
brought up to know.
"He knew how to cry, though, without no bringing up, like folks do. As
Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,
crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and
Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,
while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come
out and shut the door--ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many
people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one
left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.
"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a
sudden he put up his face.
"'Robin,' he says, 'did--did my daddy leave me a letter?'
"'A letter?' she repeated.
"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church
steps.'
"'No--why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you
know.'
"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.
"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.
"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly
been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell
him what to do.
"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.
"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big
enough to know.'
"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had
just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost
old--as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if
Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in
time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through
a child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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