The Able McLaughlins
"One is wearing blue!" They can scarcely breathe now.
Blue! Can it be blue! This is too much for Mary.
"Run, Peter!" she cries. "Tell mother! Get father! It has the looks of a soldier!" It is three weeks now since the last battle, since word has come from Wully. The little girls are jumping about in excitement.
The children's shouts had not at all disturbed the mother in the kitchen, where she sat sewing, until—could she believe her ears?—they were shouting, "'Tis Wully, mother! 'Tis Wully!" She ran out of the house, down the path.
"It never is!" she says, unsteadily. But she can see someone in blue, someone standing up, waving a cap now. She can see his white face. The children bolt down the road. She can see him, her black-bearded first-born. The driver is whipping up the horses. Home from battles, pale to the lips, he is in her arms. But she is paler.
"Run for your father!" she cries, to whoever will heed her. The children are pulling at him boisterously. The strange driver is patting his horses, his back to the family reunited. Hugged, and kissed, and patted and loved, the bearded Wully turns to the stranger.
"This is Mr. Knight, of Tyler, mother. He brought me all the way."
"'Tis a kind thing you have done!" she exclaims, shaking his hand devoutly.
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