Then the doctor, with great delicacy, rose and left us alone, and I tried to look cheerful as I sat for an hour with my mother before going to bed.
Did any of you who tried to look cheerful when you were going to leave home for the first time ever succeed, especially with those wistful, longing eyes watching you so earnestly all the time?
I'm not ashamed to say that I did not, and that I almost repented of my decision, seeing as I did what pain I was causing.
But I knew directly after that it was pain mingled with pleasure, and that I was about to do my duty as a son.
Twice over, as I lay half sleeping, I fancied I saw, or really did see, somebody gliding away from my bedside, and then all at once I found that it was morning, and I got up, had a miserable breakfast, which seemed to choke me, and soon after--how I don't know, for it all seemed very dream-like--found myself on the wharf with my mother, waiting for the boat that was to take us three travellers to the ship.
Jimmy was there, looking rather uncomfortable in his sailor's suit, which was not constructed for the use of a man who always sat down upon his heels.

The doctor was there, too, quiet and cheerful as could be, and I made an effort to swallow something that troubled me, and which I thought must be somehow connected with my breakfast.

But it would not go down, and I could do nothing but gaze hard as through a mist at the little delicate woman who was holding so tightly to my hands.

There was a dimness and an unreality about everything.

Things seemed to be going on in a way I did not understand, and I quite started at last as somebody seemed to say, "Good-bye," and I found myself in the little boat and on the way to the schooner.
Then all in the same dim, misty way I found myself aboard, watching the wharf where my mother was standing with a lady friend, both waving their handkerchiefs.