“And best of all were father and mother! I couldn’t begin to tell you how good they were. Mother used to tell us stories, and help us make balls and kites; and father would take us with him, and let us follow him about the farm, when I suppose we hindered a good deal more than we helped. He was always ready to answer our questions, too, and to help us with a hard lesson, and he used to give us calves and lambs for our very own. I don’t believe there ever was a father and mother did more to make two boys happy,” and Ben drew a tremulous sigh. “Mother was always delicate,” he went on after a moment’s pause, “and father and we boys used to do all we could to help her. But one fall she took a hard cold—none of us once thought of it being anything more than a cold. All winter she coughed so hard, and nothing the doctor gave her did any good. Theodore and I used to say to each other, ‘When it comes spring then mother will be well again,’ and we were so glad of the warm days, for they would make mother better. She didn’t get better, though; she kept growing weaker and weaker, and the children at school began to ask me did I know my mother was going to die? It made me so angry to have them say such things; and sometimes I would wake up in the night and find Theodore crying, for he is older, you know, and realized more what was coming. Then I would put my arms around his neck and say, ‘Don’t cry, Theodore; of course mother will get well. Why, we can’t live without her!’ “So it went on till September, and by that time she could only walk around the house a little, and had to lie on the sitting-room lounge most of the time; but so sweet and patient, there was never any one like her, I’m sure. Father used to come in from his work every little while and sit beside her, and when he went out I would see the tears in his eyes, for I suppose it was hardest of all for him. In September the men came with the thrashing-machine to thrash the wheat and oats. It was a chilly day for that time of the year, with one of those raw, sharp winds that cuts right through you. The dust of the thrashing always made father about sick, and with that and the weather he took a sudden cold that settled on his lungs. That night he was so sick Theodore had to go for the doctor, and, Posey, he only lived three days. “I couldn’t believe it. He had always been so strong and well that I had never thought of his dying. I knew the doctor thought he was very sick, and we were all frightened, but I didn’t once think he was going to die. And when he called us to him to bid us good-by, and told us to do all we could for mother, and to be good boys and good men, and live so that we should be ready for God’s call when it came for us—I didn’t believe it even then—I didn’t believe it till he was—gone.”