"Alla madre. Cap'na Harlow send. Pay—un mese—one mont' pay. You write gotta him?"
While Marden took his threadbare jacket and cap from the peg by the door, his mother, at the table, signed the receipt for twenty-five dollars, one month's pay in advance, on paper that was a blur before her brimming eyes. Her life, like that of many women, had been one of partings; but they were none the easier for that, and now it was as if she were selling her youngest son, who had never left her before, and selling him to go with strangers into a strange country.
Even Angelo with the monkey eyes did not see how they parted.
When the boy came out, he stumbled at the millstone step, to be sure, and the world of snow and sunlight reeled before his eyes; but his chin was high, the canvas bag rode light as a feather on his shoulder, and he swung so briskly along the narrow path in the snow that the Maltese had close work to follow with his sea-legs.
They were hardly down over the knoll
