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MOTHER'S VACATION

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 18, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 51.

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MOTHER'S VACATION.

EVERYBODY in the house, even father, had had a vacation, and now, half-way through September, the circle was again complete around the table, and one after another took up the thread of narrative, and told of pleasant experiences. Hilda had been camping by the shore; she was brown and plump, and the salt-water bathing and sea air had made her all right for her work again. Hilda taught school. Bob had gone to the mountains. Louise had visited her Grandmother Jenkins at Riverside. Father had taken a trip to town to sell some meadow-land. He hated to part with it, but the price paid was so liberal that he felt rich. Mother only had not had a day's change all summer, nor, for that matter, an outing in ten years. Somehow they all expected mother to be always there, in her place, like Gibraltar or the Sphynx.
“It’s fine to be at home again, and nobody going away for the next six months,” said Bob.
“You are mistaken, Bobby,” said a soft, decided voice. “I’m going now; it’s my turn.”
Hilda gasped in amazement.
Father set down his teacup and stared at mother as if she had suddenly gone crazy. There was a dead silence, and the clock struck six in the middle of it.
“Why, Susy!” said father. “Where are you goin’? You could have gone to town with me. I vow I didn’t ’spose you’d go.”
“You didn’t ask me, Cyrus,” said mother. “But I’m going now home to the old Farwell place, to see Phebe, Ann and Polly and Brother Dave. I shall be away three months. I’m not coming home till I’m rested, till I want to see my own folks again, till I’ve been round all my kin up home. No, there’s nobody going to take me. I’m settin’ out on this trip alone. If I want you to come after me, husband, I’ll send for you. My trunk is packed. Martha Sansom is coming over here to keep house. And my ticket’s bought.”
A bomb-shell exploding in the sitting-room would not have been more stupefying. Hilda recovered first. “Mother,” she said, reprovingly, “you haven’t got a thing that’s fit to wear.”
“What’s been good enough for me at home, will do very well when I’m visiting.”
“I can’t let you wear that old alpaca dress, and that straw bonnet with the faded cornflowers, at Uncle Dave Farwell’s,” said Hattie, resolutely. “What trunk have you packed?”
“My little old hair trunk, dear.”
“Hattie,” said father, “you pack your trunk for mother, and put in your black silk and your gray foulard, and a nice bonnet; and I’ll give you money for more for yourself. And I’ll take her, and she’ll go in the parlor car, and when she’s good and ready I’ll go after her and bring her home. Land’s sakes, but we’ve been dumb and selfish, all thinking of what we wanted and never considering her. I’m sorry, Susy,” he said, and the blue eyes under the wrinkled forehead twinkled with a glint of boyish mirth. A pair of steadfast brown ones, under silver hair, responded, and the two old folks clasped hands. The children stole out of the room and left them together.
“To think of it,” said Bobby. “Mother starting off on a vacation. Mother!”
“I can’t see why not,” ejaculated Hilda.
And so mother went, and when she came back, in three months’ time, she looked twenty years younger.—Christian Herald.