Daily independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 188?-1915, 1913-04-28

"Yes'm why yes'm, all we want is Just a
little room, Just room enough for Mother,
because work away all the time. Yes'm,
why yes'm, I'll do your %scrubbing. Why
nom, l can't come on Saturday. Yes'm,
] always work for, Mis- Judge Holcomb on
Saturdays. Why yes'm. l can come on
Fridals s. Yes'm, thank we MANN"
They were a queer looking couple,
mother and daughter; taIl, spare, angular;
singularIy alike yet vastly different; the
one white haired and feeble, the other
frail and only slightly gray.
But with her tender care Agnes looked
after Mother and ensconSed her in a tiny
housekeeping apartment where she could
putter about over her limited duties. And
Agnes, the martyr, went forth heroically
to earn the meager pittance that enabled
her so to live; no labor too hard or coarse,
no task too repellant. Her weak looking
frame seemed gifted with miraculous
strength, and after long days over a steam
ing wash-tub or Scrubbing on hands and
knees she would tramp a weary mile
through Sleet and snow to see Mother
her rigid economies making car fare pro-
hibitive. ...r.. ,a
1t was Mother who told us the story by
the Pickering freight one winter evening.
Agnes had been a proud, pretty girl, with
bright eyes and rosy cheeks, admired and
eourtea by all the youths of the country
side in her girlhood home in Indiana. And
she flirted and danced and coqustted with
them all, but gave her heart into the keep
ing Of big Tom Rashford, IN engineer.
Agnes was but eighteen and Tom a few
years her senior. The wedding day was
set and Agnes busy fingers flew in and
out stitching into filmy garments and bits
of linen the love and happiness with which
her heart overalowed.
1t was a spring morning of bird-Song
n blue skies and drifting apple-bloSsoms.
Agnes was singing like a lark, and folding
away with many loving pats the last of the
trousseau. A messenger opened the gate
and strobe NY the box-bordered walk.
There had been a collision. Tom had been
crushed beneath his engine-a shapeless
mass of scalded flesh. There was a wild
despairig cry. Then came days of fever,
babbling, delirious ~dayS-days of anxious
watching for Mother"
"An'," she concluded, her fingers working
pitifully, "Agnes amt never looked at a
beau since. Her heart jest sort o. must o.
died right there with Tom. But she took
good keer o. me. Yes'm, she's always
took good care o. me-"
We looked at Agnes in a new light,
when she came from work that night, Wet
and disheveled and toii-worn. The bent
figure took on unwonted grace; we saw
in the faded blue eyes some lingering ghost
of the sparkle that once had charmed;
some CLINT of lost luster in the spare gray
ing locks drawn taut from her high fore
head; saw in the compressed lips with
their pathetic downward droop the arching
bow of sweetness that had trilled out the
threnody to Joy or that May morning of
the long ago. f n
Long, hot summer days succeeded the
gold, cherries ones. Mother" became
more feeble and more childish; her de-
isaHds more unreasonable and insistent.
And Agnes toiled on accomplishing, never
bitter, with her oft-reitersted "Yes'm why
yes'm, it's hard, but ! do the best | can for
Mother. have to keep workin', why
yes'm,D rLau
Death gently claimed Mother for his
own at the close Of one hard day and
Agnes was left alone. It took many days
of brutal, binding labor to pay the doctor
and the funeral expenses. Dizzy days
when strange shapes dances before her
and voices sounded in her ears. Days
when the strubbing brush elattered from
hands that reached ont and graspsd-no-
thing; and catching up the brush she stole