my arms and die with you? What poor wretches we are!
“Yes, Mother, I will.”
“I will pray for you every day, Paul.”
Ah! Mother, Mother! Let us rise up and go out, back through the years, where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back to you and me alone, Mother!
“Perhaps you can get a job that is not so dangerous.”
“Yes, Mother, perhaps I can get into the cookhouse, that can easily be done.”
“You do it then, and if the others say anything———”
“That won’t worry me, Mother———”
She sighs. Her face is a white gleam in the darkness.
“Now you must go to sleep, Mother.”
She does not reply. I get up and wrap my cover round her shoulders.
She supports herself on my arm, she is in pain. And so I take her to her room. I stay with her a little while.
“And you must get well again, Mother, before I come back.”
“Yes, yes, my child.”
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