e table--I on
the same spot, on the same stool where I used to sit when her cup
toward the close of the meal came traveling along the edge of the table
and where her hand with a crust in it would sometimes blindly grope for
mine.

But she was not there. In all my life I have never seen a space so
empty!

My father was a peasant, with all the mental and physical
characteristics of his class. My sister is a peasant woman who has been
cursed with the same grinding poverty that cursed my mother's life.
About my mother there was a subtlety of intellect and a spiritual
quality that even in my ignorance was fascinating to me. I returned
equipped to appreciate it and she was gone. Gone, and a wide gulf lay
between those left behind, a gulf bridged by the relation we have to the
absent one more than by the relation we bore to each other.

We felt as keenly as others the kinship of the flesh, but there are
kinships transcendentally higher, nobler and of a purer nature than the
nexus of the flesh. There were things to say that had to be left unsaid.
They had not traveled that way. The language of my experience would have
been a foreign tongue to them. _She_ would have understood.

"Wan night be th' fire here," Jamie said, taking the pipe out of his
mouth, "she says t' me, 'Jamie,' says she, 'I'm clane done, jist clane
done, an' I won't be long here.'

"'Och, don't spake s' downmouth'd, Anna,' says I. 'Shure ye'll feel fine
in th' mornin'.'

"'Don't palaver,' says she, an' she lukt terrible serious.

"'My God, Anna,' says I, 'ye wudn't be lavin' me alone,' says I, 'I
can't thole it.'

"'Yer more strong,' says she, 'an' ye'll live till he comes back--thin
we'll be t'gether.'"

He stopped there. He could go no farther for several minutes.

"I hate a maan that gowls, but--"

"Go on," I said, "have a good one and Mary and I will wash the cups and
saucers."

"D'ye know what he wants t' help me fur?" Mary asked, with her mouth
close to his ear.

"No."

"He wants t' dhry thim so he can kiss _her_ cup whin he wipes it! Kiss
her _cup_, ye mind; and right content with that!"

"I don't blame 'im," said he, "I'd kiss th' very groun' she walked on!"

As we proceeded to wash the cups, Mary asked:

"Diz th' ministhers in America wash dishes?"

"Some of them."

"What kind?"

"My kind."

"What do th' others do?"

"The big ones lay corner-stones and the little ones lay foundations."

"Saints alive," she said, "an' wh