"
John Jay rubbed his shirt sleeve across his eyes and gave a final
snuffle. Some people never have the awakening that came to him that
afternoon. Some people go along all their days with no other thought in
life than to burrow through their own mole-hills. There in the hay, with
the shining dust of the sunbeams falling athwart the old barn floor, the
boy lay and listened. Thoughts that he had no words for, ambitions that
he could not express, yet that filled him with vague longing, seemed to
vibrate along the earnest voice, and tremble from the fulness of
George's heart into his. Even after George stopped talking and began to
whistle softly in the pause that followed, John Jay lay quite still with
his face hidden in his arms.
Ned came in presently, rustling around through the hay after eggs, and
singing at the top of his voice. The sound seemed to bring John Jay back
to his common every-day self. He sat up, grinning as if he had never
heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his
eyesight clearer.
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