preserves, recalling old memories, and making one think of bees and
butterflies and apples on the trees and pumpkins in the cornrows, and
robins and angle-worms and brown-armed men in the hay-fields? Eh, but it
was a supper!

It was late when the man from the city went to bed, and there was much
talk, for he had told his mother that he intended to stay a little
longer this time than in the past; that he had been bothered and fled
away from everything for rest. "We'll go up the river to-morrow," said
he, "just you and I, and 'visit' with each other."

He went to his room and got into bed, and then came a little tap at his
door. His mother entered. She asked the big strong man how he felt, and
patted his cheek and tucked the bedclothes in about his feet and kissed
him, and went away. He went back forty years. And he repeated
reverently--he could not help it--"Now I lay me," and slept well.

There was a breakfast as fine as had been the supper, and as for the
coffee, the hardened man of the city and jests and cynicism found
himself wondering that there should have developed jokes about what
"mother used to make." The more he thought of it, the madder he became.
"We are a nation of cheap laughers," he said to himself savagely.

At nine o'clock the mother came out to where the man was smoking on the
piazza, with her bonnet on and ready for the little boat-trip. They were
to go to the outlet of Lake Huron and back. They would have luncheon
either at Sarnia or Port Huron. They would decide when the time came.
They were two vagrants.

Dawdling in steamer chairs and looking upon the Michigan shore sat
little mother of the country and big son of the city. The woman--the
blessed silver-haired creature--forgot herself, and talked to the son as
a crony. She pointed out spots upon the shore where she, an early
teacher in the wilderness, had adventures before he was born. There was
Bruce's Creek, emptying into the river; and Mr. Bruce, most long-lived
of pioneers, had but lately died, aged one hundred and five years. There
was where the little school-house stood in which she once taught school
in 1836. There was where she, riding horseback with a sweetheart who
later became governor of the state, once joined with him in a riotous
and aimless chase after a black bear which had crossed the road. Her
cheeks, upon which there were not many wrinkles, glowed as she told the
story of her youth to the man beside her. He looked upon her