The Mother by Pearl S. Buck

Then did it seem as though the mother's heart might have some comfort, for in the springtime of that year the younger son came home and he said, "I am come home to stay a while, mother, how long I do not know, but at least until I am bid to go again."

But when she rejoiced he made little answer and scarcely seemed himself. He was so quiet, never singing or playing his capers or talking in any reckless way as he was used to do, that the mother's heart wondered if he might be ill or troubled with some secret thing. But when she spoke this fear to the cousin's wife that one said, mildly, "Well, it may be he is passing out of his childhood. How many are his years, now? The same I think as my fifth child, and she is twenty now and nearly twenty-one and wed four years. Yes, twenty-one is out of childhood, and men should not caper then as once they did, although I remember that man of yours could caper even to that last day I saw him."