Mother had been asleep, I think, but she heard my step and recognized it.
"Is that you, Boy ?" she asked.

If I had been fifty, instead of thirty-one, Mother would have called me "Boy" just the same.
"Yes, Mother," I said.
"Where have you been?
For a walk?
It is a beautiful morning, isn't it." Her only way of knowing that the morning was a beautiful one was that the shades were drawn.

She had not seen the sunlight on the bay, nor the blue sky; she had not felt the spring breeze on her face, or the green grass beneath her feet.

Her only glimpses of the outside world were those which she got on cloudy or stormy days when the shades were raised a few inches and, turning her head on the pillow, she could see beneath them.

For six years she had been helpless and bedridden in that little room.