Highland annals

I

“BUT where do they sleep?” my “foreign” friends would ask, with the impertinence of civilization, whenever they returned from a call at the shack where Len and Serena, after nightfall, compressed their spreading family into two rooms and a loft.

With a light answer I would callously shunt investigation. “Oh, Serena tucks them away!”

Rectitude, founded on bathtubs, with privacy at one’s mere discretion, had lost its power over me during the years in which I had hoped for a season sufficiently free from disaster to enable me to add two morally indispensable rooms to Len’s cabin; nevertheless the desire hung like a vague compulsion in the back of my mind, unaffected by the indifference of Serena, who, oblivious to restriction, remained the smiling magnet of her swarm.

I did go so far as to give Len the lumber from an old house which I had torn down with the luxurious intent of lining my own cabin from the material. I found that it contained enough sound chestnut to provide an ample kitchen for his house, and we spent a happy evening making the plans. There was to be a big fireplace, built by Uncle Ben Copp, an authority on chimney structure, and plenty of “shevs,” about which Len was enthusiastic, though Serena, innocent of industrial vision, liquidly inquired: “Whatever’ll I put on ’em?”

Len was to build the kitchen. He was untrained, but not inapt, and rarely finished a job without a proud touch of invention that gave him as much pleasure as the pay he received. But, as the only member of his family possessing the slightest energetic fire, “ever’ turn was hisn,” and he was always two or three years in the rear of his more ambitious intentions. The lumber made a promising stack in the back yard, and occasionally during the season that followed, Len would say to me: “Reckon my work’ll ever let up so’s I can git at that kitchen?”

The pile gradually receded, very noticeably after a few days of rainy weather, and by the end of the second year it had withdrawn to invisibility. No one ever spoke of the kitchen again, and I would have been the last to mention it; but when the winter winds found the crevices in my cabin and, with the gaiety of discoverers, attacked my spine, I thought longingly of my lumber that had disappeared in Serena’s cook-stove; and one day I had the pleasure of hearing Si Goforth ask, as he passed through Len’s yard, whatever they’d put their stack o’ chestnut into? Getting no answer from a hurt and silent group, he added slyly: “A lumber pile nigh the house is as bad as a rail fence; it sucks itssef.”

I never had the hardihood to probe into the sleeping arrangements of Serena’s household; but I could see the two beds in the room where they kept a fire, sat and talked, picked the banjo and received their company. I knew there were beds in the loft for the boys, and that granpap placed his own there when he chose to live with Len and exchange, for a time, Coretta’s fidgety ambition for the cheery fatalism of Serena. There was no bed in the room where they cooked and ate, but this was for lack of space only. The necessarily long table, benches, and chairs devoured any vacancy left by the cook-stove, cupboard, and water-shelf. From chance remarks I gathered that if visitors were men-folks they ascended to the loft; if women, Len went above, leaving the guests below with Serena and the girls. There were “ticks” which could be placed on the floor when the beds overflowed, as they did quite frequently. Just where they were put was something to wonder over, but I kept the whole matter in a sort of kindly murk, waiting the day when I should be able to act with deference due to an articulate conscience.

Because of Serena’s apathy toward gardening, canning, drying, and preserving, and her persistent habit of letting the children “run along and milk,” the family diet through the greater part of the year was without surprise or adventure. Corn bread, coffee, fried meat, ’taters, and ’lasses satisfied hunger, with no concessions to either infancy or age. Let me not forget pickled beans. That dish was a mainstay for babe and man. But notwithstanding the depressing fare, there was always company at Len’s. Constant good humor and unflagging welcome made for an open house. “Stay with us,” Len would say, and add the mountain jargon, which in this case was almost literally true: “We can give you plenty o’ spring water, pickled beans, an’ satisfaction.”

Sometimes I tried a carefully padded remonstrance, such as: “Don’t you think it is too hard on Serena to have so much company?”

“Reenie don’t bother hersef. They take what comes.”

“With so many children, Len, you’ll kill yourself soon enough without providing for others.”

“You kain’t call what I give ’em providin’. I tell Reenie to hand ’em out some salt an’ let ’em pick ’round the yard.” And with his laughter filling the air, he would rush off to whichever of his many jobs was driving him the hardest.

My approaches to Serena were alike futile. I have good reason to remember the last one, which took place on my front porch one Sunday morning.

“We’re bound to take keer o’ the Madison folks when they come out,” she said, in response to a tentative protest from me. “The Merlins used to live back there, an’ so did all o’ my folks.”

“But Len isn’t the only Merlin around here.”

“He’s the one they think the most of anyhow,” she returned proudly.

“They’re not all from Madison. What about the people from over the ridge?”

“As to them, Mis’ Dolly, you know as well as I do that we’re up here half-way ’twixt all o’ Nighthawk settlement an’ the stores an’ post-office down at Beebread. When them folks git on top o’ the mountain, goin’ er comin’, they’ve got to set an’ rest. Ef it’s dinner-time, of course I lay ’em a plate, an’ ef it’s leanin’ toward night you wouldn’t want me not to ast ’em to stay. A barn cat would be civiller than that an’ let ’em sleep in the hay.”

“There are other houses on the ridge, Serena.”

“Yes, here’s yorn right here, but you’re livin’ by yersef an’ company makes trouble. I’ve got sech a big fam’ly I don’t notice it when a few more drap in. Lots o’ times,” she continued, in an attempt to save my feelings and underrate her own popularity, “they say to me let’s go round to yore house, an’ I know you’re busy, so I tell ’em we’ll go after we set a bit. Then I wait till it’s too late to come over. ’Tain’t because they don’t like you, an’ don’t you git to thinkin’ it.”

I had understood that Serena always interpreted me favorably to the community, but I had not realized until that moment how much I owed to her sense of proprietorship in me and my affairs. More eager than ever to reciprocate, I pursued the argument.

“You haven’t explained Sunday. Very likely you’ll have to cook dinner for half a dozen people to-day, besides your own family.”

“I’m sort o’ expectin’ it. Some young folks told Lonie and Ben they’s comin’ up to-day. You’re always sayin’ let the childern have a good time, an’ I reckon you wouldn’t want me to shet off Sunday. There wouldn’t be much left fer ’em.”

She knew I would find this unanswerable, and thus encouraged entered on doubtful ground.

“Har’et Drake said maybe she’d come too, with her man an’ the young-uns. She said they’d take dinner with you er me, one er t’other.”

“With me?”

“Har’et thinks a heap o’ you, but maybe she’ll stay at my house. I knowed her out in Madison.”

My eyes sought their familiar refuge, the horizon, and even as my glance swept the hill it fell upon Mrs. Drake, her man, and the five children in undeviating approach. Serena’s eyes followed mine.

“Looks like they’re comin’ here,” she said. “They’ll git a better dinner anyway. I ain’t got what I ought to hev fer anybody that’ll climb all the way up here jest a-neighborin’.”

I gave the guests a welcome which I hope did not reveal a daunted heart. There was still a chance that they would go with Serena, and my day of sun and solitude be restored to me. The Madison influence might prevail. Unexpectedly I found myself blessing that contemned affiliation.

When Serena rose to go she proved to be the preferred hostess. Mr. Drake had brought a banana muskmelon from home, which he left with me in gentle propitiation for his desertion; and as the family accompanied Serena around the curving road I may have had a slight feeling of humiliation but no sense of injury. I knew that as an entertainer I could not compete with Len and Serena. They were reservoirs of mountain song and story, and their lingual flow never permitted a conversational vacuum. No wonder that I was passed by.

Serena undulated from my sight, but left illumination behind her. In a whirl of emotion I went to my smoke-house and took down from my store as much as I could carry in a generous basket, and, taking a back trail, brought the stuff to Serena’s kitchen door while her guests were “chowing” with Len on the front porch.

“The gardens haven’t come in yet,” I apologized, when Serena appeared at the door, “and I was afraid your canned stuff had given out.”

It was always out by Christmas, and this was April.

“Yes,” said Serena, “it’s jest about gone. An’, I declare, I was out o’ sugar an’ lard too! I’ll shore pay you back.”

“Never mind that. The Drakes don’t get up here often. I want you to set them a good dinner.”

“I told Len,” she said, with a touch of triumph, “that he’d got it all wrong ’bout you not wantin’ us to have so much company. I told him you’s as free-hearted as ef you’s born in the mountains.”

With humbled step I turned into the trail home, and never again offered any admonitions against excessive hospitality.

Through the spring and summer I continued to make apologetic contributions to Serena’s table, glad in this way to lessen any debt of festivity that I owed the community. A more trustful spirit seemed to reign on the mountain, and there was a happy impetus toward no one cared what. All might have gone well for a much longer period if, toward the end of the summer, I had not become too deeply concerned over the emaciated appearance of little Ross, and the fact that Len, long overburdened, showed signs of failing health, apparently evident to none but me. An encounter with Serena brought my feelings to the surface. She came in one day to tell me of an incident that had amused her “past common.”

But here I should explain that Serena insisted on “raising” ducks every year. I had striven in vain to induce her to transfer her love from the unprofitable duck to the remunerative hen. Ducks amused her, and at first I shared her pleasure when she took me to see a brood that had just “broke through.” A nestful of chickens is tame in comparison with ducklings that seduce the eye with their deeper, ineffable downiness and their constant vibratory motions that seem to annex the air to their twinkling contour. As they grow older the entertainment deepens. The rôle of parent, for good reasons, is enacted always by a hen, and she will soon learn to wander unconcernedly on the bank while her charges are diving and paddling in the water, but it is another matter when, a little after sundown, she attempts to hover ducklings that are determined to straggle about until after dark. The desperate mother wears herself out clucking, squawking, and spluttering as she tries to prevail upon the rebels to change their nature and go to sleep. Sometimes they impishly gather under her and are quiet for a moment, then as soon as the hen is in a merciful doze, out they come. The morning also has its drama, for the ducklings are awake and ready to run about before daylight, while the hen is still longing for sleep. Throughout the day she will droop from weariness and distractedly revive to pursue her duty unthanked and derided.

As time passed, Serena’s ducklings remained out later, and finally would stroll home, drabbled and noisy, around nine o’clock. In the early morning one might see the hen roaming disconsolately without an offspring to cheer her, all of her brood being far in the woods searching the little streams and wet banks for the food ancestrally beloved. Their number lessened as wild creatures devoured them. Even dogs considered them rightfully their own, if found far from the barnyard, and by the end of the summer Serena would be as duckless as at its beginning, but she had had many a pleasant, shady jaunt in search of them “outdoin’est things.”

“I’ll try again,” she would say. “Duck-feathers make sech good pillers.” But she never got a feather.

On the day I have mentioned, she rippled in and said: “You know I set that gray hen on duck-eggs again.”

“So late in the year? Of course you’ll lose them.”

“I’d lose ’em anyway,” she said, surrendering fundamental ground for temporary defense. “An’ I want to tell you ’bout that hen. You know what an awful time that first set give her this summer. They wuz the head-longest bunch I’ve ever had, an’ they kept her about crazy. I wouldn’t hev set her again ef there’d been another hen ready. I felt sorry fer the pore thing. To-day it wuz time fer her to come off an’ I went to the nest to see about her. I didn’t hear no yeepin’ an’ I stood around fer a good spell. All at onct there come a ‘yeep’ like a slit—you know how different a duck’s ‘yeep’ is from a chicken’s—an’ when that hen heard it she jumped off the nest an’ flew fer a smart stretch a-squawkin’ like she wuz skeered crazy, an’ run up the hill out o’ sight, an’ I ain’t seen her sence she took off. ‘Yeep,’ an’ she’s gone! She’d been showed, that gray hen had.”

“Serena,” I said, determined upon judgment, and refusing to smile more than once, “it is time for you to quit fooling with ducks. There are so many things you could be doing.”

“What things?”

“Your spring needs cleaning out. It is full of rotting leaves.”

“Yes, I’ve been wishin’ Len could git time fer that.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“It ’ud ruin a spring fer a woman to clean it out.”

“It was a very lazy woman who started that superstition, Serena. I clean my spring all the time.”

“Yes, an’ it ain’t what it used to be. I’ve been noticin’ that. It’s druggy.”

“Because the fine roots of that big maple have reached it. I’ll have Len take that tree out as soon as he gets time.”

“Looks like he gets busier ’n busier.”

“Of course, when the children are getting bigger and bigger and are not doing their share of the work. Len is killing himself trying to bring in enough for ten.”

“The boys don’t take after their poppie. An’ if they did, it wouldn’t keep him from workin’ as hard as he could anyhow. I do all I can fer him.”

“You could give him better food.”

“Ain’t beans good?”

“Didn’t you notice yesterday that Len left the table without eating a single bean? He was hot and tired—and pickled beans! He drank a lot of coffee and ate two bites of yellow bread. Then he went to the field to work until night.”

“I ain’t ever heard him complain.”

“You never will. He’ll die believing you are the only woman on earth.”

“He ain’t goin’ to die.”

“No. You are going to quit living out of a lard can, a coffee bucket, and a pickle barrel.”

She was crying a little. “I ain’t got cans fer puttin’ up stuff,” she said.

“I’ll look out for the cans, Serena. You know you can work. I’ve seen you.”

“But I kain’t keep it up.”

She knew her weakness. Work one day and rest six was her version of the great example.

“Lonie will help you, and the boys. Len will plough and harrow all the good land you want for gardens and patches. We’ll put in a fall garden too, and have all kinds of green things through the winter—spinach, lettuce, collards, turnip-tops, celery—besides the keepers, parsnips, carrots, salsify, sweet potatoes put up in sand—and beans!”

I rushed on, with plans undigested but dazzling, and her few tears dried in shining twinkles. “I’ll try,” she said, “if you’ll keep right after me.” I smiled too, and she started home.

“I wonder where that gray hen is by now,” she turned to say. “Ef you’d seen her when that duck-diddly yeeped, you’d be laffin’ yet.”

II

Serena tried. Her lifelong acceptance of things as they happened had kept her unaware of the complexities of an occupation made up of a jumble of industries, as farm life must ever be until the ferment of organization begins to heave effectively in the mind of the last individual, the man on the land. But she was favored by nature with a good brain, and began to be pleased when she found that it would work.

A neighbor made a dress for Lonie and the product was so hopeless a bungle that Serena, perforce, had to attempt remaking it. With no help from me except the initial urge, a trifle imperious, perhaps, she got at it, and the result was so charming that I asked in surprise why she had taken it to Mrs. Hite.

“I didn’t feel like foolin’ with it.”

“But you see you did have to fool with it. And you had to wash for Mrs. Hite in exchange for the sewing.”

“Washin’s easy if I’m feelin’ good. It kinder bothers my head cuttin’ an’ sewin’. But Lonie is takin’ on so about that dress, I reckon I’ll have to mess with her clo’s from now on.”

“No, teach her to make them herself.”

“Lord-a-mercy, she’ll have to pick it up like I did. Don’t you git to pushin’ me, Mis’ Dolly, an’ maybe I’ll make it through like you want me to.”

She had the same success with the boys’ shirts. They had been accustomed to one sleazy shirt for Sundays and rags for work-days. Now, released from the commercially constant grays and drab blues of the cheaper ready-mades, they could, for the same money, buy material for two and have the thrill of selecting from an assortment of specks and stripes and colors of their heart. One Sunday when Len and Serena halted by my doorstep on their way to “preachin’ over the ridge,” I noticed that Len was uplifted by a modest lavender stripe. “I’ve been wearin’ them ol’ dingy shirts to meetin’ fer twenty years, an’, Lord, I’m sick of ’em,” he said, with a proud eye on Serena, the worker of miracles.

No more time was spent in following an ever-dwindling flock of ducks. Serena and I, with the help of Ned, patched the cover of an old building, treated it with mite-proof whitewash, and with planks and clean straw made nests irresistible to any hen worthy of her keep. For the diddlies, we carried strips from an old sawmill and made coops which we could set about in sunny places. And Len sowed an acre of rye for green winter picking; also a “skiver of wheat” which was to be all Serena’s, as a basis for “feed,” but I suspected that the hens would anticipate that harvest—and they did.

In the spring, over at Len’s, a bountiful garden was in the ground early. It had been my onerous but measurably happy custom, if my intermittent journeying permitted, to cultivate a garden for my own needs, the surplus going, as kisses do, by favor, which meant that Serena had her share. But now—could I not buy of her? I had derived from my gardens a savory pleasure, superior and cryptic, but with ever-growing rebellion I realized that my method was the method of the spendthrift instead of the canny reckoner.

Take, if it please you, the most responsive of plants, lettuce. Consider its history from its origin in a seed catalogue (carefully conned instead of that haunting, unopened book of essays) to its final surrender on your dining-table, gold-white in its depths, and crackling crisp from an earthen jar set in your clear, cold spring. Think, if the nuances of appetite permit, of the digging, the fertilizing, and the pulverizing of the soil, the preparation of new beds for transplanting, the transplanting itself at the time most propitious for the product, however inopportune for you, the guarding against heat, against cold, against drouth, against beating rain, the covering, the uncovering, and the rising early at last to uproot it with the night cool in its heart; all demanding a thousand thoughts and movements before its æsthetic finality can complete your dinner scheme and perish, it may be, under a tooth indifferently devouring mere lettuce. And so with those tender, early limas. So too, and a little more, with that dish of creamed something. And if your nucleus is broiled chicken, as it must often be, the alternative being some form of hog—chicken brought up from the egg under your proprietary eye; if your periphery include blueberries that did not fall of themselves from the ridge on the peak to ennoble your meal; and if the cream is the velvety sequence of a wet and weedy climb to the top of the pasture in pursuit of a thankless cow, pampered from your own corn-crib, that merely lifts her head and watches your stumbling, bedrabbled arrival to the last inch; the thought of being able to “buy from Serena” will be a warm and driving glow in your heart. For such an end I, prudent at last, was willing to forego any mystic succulence to be secured from the participation of this my hand in the birth and growth of my edibles.

The injustice of letting the burden fall to Serena did not trouble me. She had a family to save, I had none. With her it was duty; with me it was an interruption of duty. But if my reasoning was fallacious, if my aim was besmirched with selfishness, if my intended liberality as to prices was only the bare gesture of reciprocity, I was ready to say, so be it. I was under the spell of that most alluring of hopes, the hope of combining the simplicities of nature, the abandon of the wilderness, the austere ecstasy of solitude, with the flowing market of the city voluptuary.

And so there was a bountiful garden at Len’s. It required tact amounting to technic to get all of the family help necessary in its preparation, and when finally it shot up with its promise of abundance, I felt that I had perspiringly insinuated it into and out of the ground. However, there it was, and the summer passed, leaving us affluent with the plunder we had wrung from it.

But happiness had fled the mountain. Slowly, reluctantly, in my contact with the family, I became aware of the desertion—even felt it in my own denuded days. Formerly I had accepted Serena’s occasional help, knowing so well that I was not withdrawing her from imperative tasks at home. Now that was changed, and with a vengeance that demanded more than a reversal of favors. My time was never my own, calculated and indubitable. Daily it became more difficult to comfort myself with thoughts of “next year” when Serena’s reformation would be thorough and her work so adjusted that she at least would have time to run over to my cabin and remove the ashes from my big fireplace. I could never take out those relentlessly accumulating ashes without a protest to the stony gods; while Serena had often declared that she enjoyed doing it. “It makes the place look so clean and purty,” she would say, and go at the work with the heart of an artist. My thoughts began to linger tenderly on the days that were gone, days adorned with a dilatory, unprovident, laughter-loving Serena, who could always find time to take out my ashes.

I recalled that she had had a special gift of service for each of us, and began to see in that the secret of her power. Ben cared for nothing so much as to have his one pair of trousers pressed for Sunday morning, when overalls were cast aside and he arrayed himself for courtship. Serena, unfailingly in the old days, had made this her Saturday-night job. Len could strain contentedly through the longest day of work if Serena would sit down after supper to hear his tale of it, and his plan for to-morrow; and it was her habit to take her seat by his side as soon as he had left the table and cut off his “chaw” of tobacco. If the children washed the dishes, very well. If they didn’t, or wouldn’t, cleaning up was deferred until morning, without protest or friction. Lonie loved music, and Serena not only traded her pet pig for a banjo, she never interrupted her daughter’s strumming, giving it an importance above any urgency of the moment, such as bringing water when the kettle was sizzling dry, rescuing a line of clothes from an advancing shower, or pulling a toddler from the bank of the stream that ran through the yard. Such minor duties Serena unhesitatingly assumed if Lonie happened to be lolling on the bed, her eyes on the ceiling, and her banjo on her stomach, while she drew out the chords to accompany such highland classics as

For her own pleasure, Serena demanded a neat appearance. Others might sling their rags and wear caked overalls, but a trim garb was her unquestioned privilege. Of late it seemed to me that the imp of untidiness had more than one finger upon her. That certainly meant unhappiness for herself. Then what did it indicate for the others? Their special right, too, was ignored, along with my fireplace.

But what began to give me real anxiety was the change in Serena’s expression and bearing. She was showing a network of fine wrinkles on her forehead, and beginning to walk with a slight, straining stoop, akin to Len’s—a stoop that had begun to reproach me in my dreams.

I was pondering all this one morning when I heard the chirp of Aunt Janey Stiles. “Why’n’t you go to preachin’ to-day? You’ve got a meetin’-house face on ye.”

“Oh, Aunt Janey! Did you stay on the mountain last night?”

“Yes, I wuz so tired when I pulled up from Beebread yisterday that I stopped at Reenie’s an’ slept there. I ain’t goin’ to do it agin though.”

“What’s the matter, Aunt Janey?”

“The devil, I reckon. When I woke up this mornin’ I thinks fer a minute I’m at Dan Goforth’s, where the roarin’s as steady as the wind in Peach Tree Gap. I couldn’t b’lieve I’s at Reenie’s. They all slept late, ’cause it’s Sunday, an’ Ben got up an’ built a fire. Then he kept tryin’ to git his mother up, ’cause she hadn’t pressed his pants the night before, an’ he wuz aimin’ to go to meetin’ on Nighthawk. He kept stompin’ around, and jerkin’ the cheers about, and then he begun to swear. Right then Len bounces out o’ bed. Maybe he wuz sleepy er something, an’ didn’t understand it, but anyway he jumps up when Ben begins swearin’, an’ takes up a cheer an’ runs him out o’ the house with it, an’ him ’thout shoes on an’ hit frosty.”

“Len didn’t do that!”

“I ain’t astin’ you to believe it.”

“But he’s foolish about Ben.”

“He’s a sight bigger fool about Reenie though, an’ I reckon maybe he thought Ben wuz cussin’ at her.”

“Aunt Janey, this is terrible!”

“I thought I’d drap by an’ tell ye. I felt like you ought to know there’s something spilin’ the peaceablest family in the settlement, and you’d better find out what it is.”

Aunt Janey went off, leaving me to unhappy reflections. Toward night I had a visit from Len. Of old it had been his habit to call out some witty greeting as he approached, but now his appearance was pathos unrelieved. He took a chair and began to talk of far-off matters, but I refused to be led around Robin Hood’s barn, and hurried him, slightly bewildered, to the object of his visit.

“We wuz gittin’ along all right,” he said, “till Reenie began to want ’tater patches in the moon.”

“You are getting along all right now, Len. Isn’t that old store debt nearly paid, that you used to say kept you awake nights?”

“Ay, that’s quit brogin’ round my bed, but I don’t mean things like that. I mean they ain’t any satisfaction in livin’. It’s been nigh three weeks sence Reenie set down by me an’ kept still long enough fer me to tie the first word to the next one. She’s cleanin’ up, er churnin’, er gittin’ the childern’s clo’s fixed fer school, er clearin’ something er other out o’ the way so she can put in a full day to-morr’, she says, like next day wouldn’t have any hours at all. She don’t hardly take time to nuss little Ross, an’ him lookin’ like he ain’t goin’ to be here another year.”

“You’re looking better yourself, Len. You weigh more, don’t you?”

“Oh, I know we’ve got more to eat an’ to put on, but I’d ruther wear a feller an’ a wench, an’ set down to corn bread an’ coffee, an’ see some satisfaction. Lonie slips out with her banjo an’ goes to Bob Ellis’s, an’ that boy o’ Bob’s ain’t fit company fer my girl. It’ll come to something bad shore. An’ Ben is cuttin’ up like he’s goin’ to marry that no-’count girl o’ Jem Ray’s. It’ll be a sorry day fer Reenie ef he brings that thing in. Reenie’s worried to the bone, an’ coughs haf the night so she kain’t sleep. I don’t want her to be like Dan Goforth’s wife, a-strainin’ up hill and down, pickin’ strawberries, an’ blackberries, an’ buckberries, an’ dryin’ fruit, an’ cannin’ peaches, an’ runnin’ after chickens, an’ if ever she sets down a minute he says: ‘Nancy, looks like ye’d take better keer o’ that something er other, an’ me workin’ so hard to keep the fam’ly off the county,’ an’ she ups an’ goes at it agin. Her pore little hands, you could see to read through ’em, an’ she’s so scant you could put her in a matchbox mighty nigh, an’ hit full. I don’t want Reenie to git thataway. When I married her I didn’t count on gittin’ much help. I knowed she wuz like her father, Uncle Lish Bates, out in Madison. He wuzn’t a workin’ man by natur. Six hundred acres o’ land wuz what he owned, an’ when one o’ his fields got wore out he would pick out the richest piece on the place, where the big timber growed, an’ cut a dead-ring around the oaks an’ chestnuts an’ poplars, an’ next year when they’s dead he’d chop out a hole in ’em an’ set fire in the hole, an’ it ’ud never go out till the tree wuz burnt up, less’n it rained, so he didn’t have clearin’ to do, only pilin’ brush. In the winter he’d go out an’ git him a big bunch o’ wood an’ bring it in an’ stack it up in the corner, high as he could. Then he’d make a big fire an’ set an’ tell the masterest tales so long as they wuz anybody to drap in an’ listen, an’ when they wuzn’t he’d jest set an’ sing. He couldn’t read a book-word, but he knowed ever’ song from Noher down. Nothin’ ever made him mad, an’ he wuz so clever round his house that folks said ef the devil wuz to come along, Uncle Lish would set him a bite an’ sing him a song, then tell him the way to the next place. I thought I wuz gittin’ something like that when I married Reenie. I knowed I could work hard enough fer both of us, an’ ef I wanted to do it I wuz my own fool an’ nobody else’s. But here’s Reenie goin’ against her own sef, seems like, an’ so different I’m about to fergit where I live. I want you to go an’ talk to her, Mis’ Dolly. That’s what I’ve come fer. She’ll listen to what you say.”

“Hadn’t you better talk to her yourself, Len?” I asked, feeling appropriately uncomfortable.

“She might snap me up. She’s never done that in her life, an’ ef she did, I’d never fergit it. I ain’t goin’ to resk it. If I kain’t live peaceable with my own wife, we’ll bust the quilt right now an’ quit.”

He knew, of course, the part I had played in the change that afflicted Serena, but in his eyes, pleading so humbly for her restoration, there was no reproachful sign. I made him no promise further than agreeing to talk with her next day, but that was enough to send him home in a hopeful mood. Something had to be done, but it was not yet my intention to advise Serena to abandon her industrious course. A way of adjustment must be found. Contentment ought, and surely would, follow thrift.

It was nearly sundown the next day before I could feel ready for the promised talk. I found Serena sitting in her kitchen, flapping a straw hat to cool her reddened forehead, though we were well into autumn. A bucket of wild gooseberries was on the floor by her chair. She had just come from Three Pine Ridge, she explained. The gooseberries were very thick up there.

“Didn’t you get tired, Serena, with such a climb?”

“Tired wuzn’t nothin’. I reckon the ground hurt fer fifteen feet around me. An’, Mis’ Dolly, I’ve quit.”

There was a brief silence between us, then she entered upon her defense.

“’Tain’t no use fer you to say you’ll hep me any more’n you do now, ’cause you kain’t. Len said last night it looked like you wuz gittin’ sort o’ keen an’ sharp-natered, an’ I told him it was on account o’ you runnin’ over here so much, an’ me no time to go to yore house an’ hep ye out in a pinch. He said he’d a lot ruther I wouldn’t do so much at home an’ hep you a little, ef that wuz what it took to keep you easy. But it looks like from the time I begin in the mornin’ to git the childern off to school——”

“And how well they are doing, Serena! The teacher has been telling me. They look so happy in their new clothes, and Lissie and Tom are getting fat too.”

She took no notice of my trivial interpolation.

“An’ find all their caps an’ ’boggins an’ fix their dinner to carry, an’ something always to be mended ’fore they can start, and the cows waitin’ to be milked, an’ you tellin’ me to milk ’em on the stroke o’ the clock, the same time ever’ day——”

“And you’ve been having plenty of milk and butter. That’s a triumph, Serena, in a big family like yours.”

“An’ ever’ dish an’ pot to be washed, an’ the house to redd up, all before I can begin a day’s work, an’ Lonie a-sulkin’ ’cause I want her to take holt o’ the sewin’ while I’m puttin’ up stuff, an’ Ben, he used to think there wuzn’t nobody but me—” Here her voice shook slightly and she tacked about rebelliously. “But I ain’t keerin’ what they all think, I’m goin’ by my own feelin’s. An’ I’ve quit. I come to it up there in the late roas’in’-year patch. I went by there as I come from the ridge with this big bucket o’ gooseberries, which was heavy enough without a pile o’ roas’in’ years in my apern, but you said I must git another big mess ’fore the frost struck ’em heavy, an’ that field was plum full o’ pack-saddlers. One stung me ever’ time I laid my hand on a roas’in’ year. Hit hurts worse’n a hornet fer a minute, an’ it’s harder on a body’s temper than a hornet is. Hit makes you feel bad all over an’ inside too. An’ this mornin’ I put on them sandals you give me to easy my feet, an’ by four o’clock they had me broke off at the ankles. I reckon my feet take a different kind o’ easin’ from yorn. An’ here’s these gooseberries got to be legged ’fore I can git supper, so’s I can cook ’em while I’m bakin’ bread, an’ save stove-wood. Ben is rearin’ an’ pitchin’ all the time now ’bout me usin’ so much wood, an’ leavin’ me to git it mysef haf the time. I’m so tired I know I ain’t goin’ to sleep none to-night.” Then, with a desolation in her voice that made my eyes suddenly hot, she added: “My sleep is all I git.”

I was stricken silent, and she began again. “They’re goin’ to bury Uncle Nathe Ponder to-morr’, an’——”

“Oh, Serena, is Mr. Ponder dead?”

“He died a Saturday. The Freemasons are comin’ out from Carson to bury him proper, an’ here I am tied up with fixin’ things to eat next winter! I ain’t had a chance to look inter the door at Uncle Nathe’s, an’ him been sick three months.”

“He was a good man, by all accounts.”

“Yes, I wonder why the Lord didn’t take shif’less ol’ Med Pace ’stead of a good man like Uncle Nathe, but I reckon He don’t want all the culls. ’Course Uncle Nathe had his way ’bout most things, but he was shore a good man. Never was a widder that couldn’t go to his mill an’ git a bushel o’ meal when she didn’t know where else to go. They got to callin’ the bottom o’ the meal-sack ‘Uncle Nathe,’ round in Silver Valley where he lived. When the meal was out they’d say: ‘We’re gittin’ down to Uncle Nathe.’ The Freemasons ought to give him a proper funeral ef they’d give it to anybody. Len says Arn Weaver wants to take a load o’ folks in his car, ef it don’t rain. Ef it rains he kain’t git over Red Hog Gap. I’ve never stept inter a car, an’ it would put heart inter me to git to go. I didn’t even see the baptizin’ on Nighthawk when they’s fifteen hit the water. An’ there’s Sis Long’s baby I ain’t ever looked at. It’s the first one she’s had in three year an’ they’re all so proud they’re buttin’ stumps about it. Hit don’t seem right to lay sech store by eatin’. Ef we ain’t got time fer dyin’ an’ bein’ born, what hev we got time fer?”

“Serena, how big is that car of Arnold Weaver’s?”

“It’ll hold seven scrouged in the seats, an’ you can pack in as many young-uns as you want to.”

“I don’t suppose you could get the children ready to go to the funeral to-morrow.”

“No, I’d have to wash their clo’s all around, an’ do some mendin’. I couldn’t git ’em ready if I stayed up all night.”

“When Len comes in I want you to tell him to get word to Arn that we’ll go in his car to-morrow. We’ll leave Ben with the children and take Lonie with us.”

“You kain’t git Len to stop fodder-pullin’. He never done that in his life. Him an’ Sam ain’t brothers when it comes to takin’ fodder.”

“He’ll stop, Serena.”

Her eyes were like great jewels. “Them gooseberries’ll sour ’fore I git back.” But, as if afraid that I would take second thought, she appended hastily: “I don’t think much o’ gooseberries anyway. They’ll look about as good to me a-spilin’ as a-keepin’.”

III

We went to the funeral, and Serena and I remained in Silver Valley for a day and night, the guests of Aunt Lizy Haynes. When we returned it was the old Serena who came home. The factitious disguise of the past twelve months had dropped utterly away. She assumed my acquiescence, and received it. Her utmost effort had been given, and my way had proved a failure. Therefore her own was better, and she returned to it with conscientious abandon. Her silence, in regard to her long, faithful struggle, grew, I think, out of her gentle pity for my defeat. Possibly she loved me more, but that was the crowning seal of my descent, marking the fall of authority. With time and tact and no mistakes I might again give oracular advice, but for the present my “mouth was growed up.”

Serena’s floor was not scrubbed, but my fireplace was neat once more, and my house shone with her occasional presence. Ben returned to week-day rags, but his Sunday trousers were always ready. Lonie lolled at home and picked the banjo, lazy indeed, but a vestal in no danger of perjure. Len found “satisfaction,” with Serena’s chair touching his in the firelight. He would grow thin again on coffee and untasted beans, but his smile would endure. Little Ross was happy with his mother’s arms waiting at any time. Of all the children he was the one that showed no improvement during Serena’s period of reformation. He might die of malnutrition, but tragedy—is it not the commonplace of life? And happiness the rare fortune? I questioned Serena for the hundredth time about the boy’s diet. Oh, yes, he was eating eggs right along. But this time I was not satisfied with a meagre affirmative.

“How many does he eat?”

“I don’t keep no count. He goes to the nest when he hears a hen cackle. You told me the fresher they was the better they was, an’ I told him he could have ’em soon as they’s laid. He brings ’em in, gits him a spoon o’ grease, an’ cleans the ashes off the fire-shovel an’ cooks ’em on it right then.”

“But he can’t get them soft that way.”

“Oh, he kain’t eat ’em soft like you showed me how to fix ’em, jelly all through. They make him sick thataway. I thought it wuz better fer him to eat a hard egg than no egg at all. He cooks ’em till they couldn’t be no harder ’thout burnin’ up. An’ he takes enough of ’em. I kain’t look around, seems like, ’thout seein’ him cookin’ one. He’s drinkin’ milk, too, only he ain’t had none sence yisterday ’cause we’ve been out o’ coffee, barrin’ the grounds I boiled over fer Len.”

“What has coffee to do with it?”

“He kain’t take milk less’n it’s about haf coffee. He learned to drink coffee when he was a baby, an’ he won’t take milk at all ef I don’t mix it up good with coffee. Then he’ll drink a lot of it. Yes, he takes plenty milk an’ eggs, but I kain’t see its heppin’ him a bit. He rolls about all night, an’ talks in his sleep, an’ gits up a-frettin’ till we kain’t stand him. I have to take him on my lap an’ nuss him like a baby ’fore he’ll quiet down. Len’s always sayin’, ‘Reenie, fer the Lord’s sake, take the pore little feller,’ an’ as soon as he gits on my lap he thinks he’s all right. An’ him ten year old. Ef the big uns git to be babies again I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do. I kain’t git on with my work a-settin’ backside to it all the time.”

But no one could smile in Serena’s heavenly way and at the same time be sincerely pining to get on with her work.

During her frictionally industrious year, the stream of company had somewhat lessened, but within a month after her return to the old smiling status it had resumed its normal flow. As time passed, the family larder was heavily, though genially, touched. The children’s winter store of “balanced rations” melted away in hospitable warmth, the cows dribbled their milk uncertainly, and if butter appeared on the breakfast-table, the small saucer was much augmented by a big bowl of gravy made of half-cooked flour and grease, which at least was “filling”; and so long as the holiday atmosphere prevailed, every one, family and visitors alike, was superbly indifferent to dietary monotony.

I did not resume my encouraging contributions, and probably this was taken as a hint of disapproval, which caused a slight tension between our houses. One day near dark, when I found that Serena had to provide for nine sleepers besides her own ten, I offered to take three of the small children home with me, and met a dignified refusal. She “wouldn’t think o’ troublin’ me noway.” I went home, my conscience narcotized, and feeling a sort of admiration for Serena’s resourcefulness. But about bedtime she appeared, a little crestfallen, and said: “I reckon I’ll have to let the young-uns come over this onct. Uncle Med Pace drapped in jest now with two o’ his boys, an’ I ain’t got another tick I can put down. Ef it wuzn’t sech a cold night I could make out with a pallet, but we need all the kivers on the beds.”

I told her I should be glad to have the children, perhaps overdoing my heartiness because of her evident compunction. When she left, to send them over, she observed the highland punctilio of asking me to accompany her and spend the night. This with no sense of the ludicrous. It was immemorial custom, from which any deviation, under any circumstances, would have seemed boorish.

The next time I was called upon to receive the overflow from her cabin there was less reluctance in her manner, and the third time it was done with such ease of spirit that I said testily: “Serena, why don’t you take boarders and get a little pay for your trouble?”

About a week afterward I passed Len’s on my way to Beebread. The house was a hundred yards distant from the main road, with only two gigantic apple-trees intervening. An old man, assisted by Serena, was removing plunder from a strange wagon before the door, but I knew better than to stop and investigate a happening so unusual. If I waited, I should eventually hear all about it; if I inquired, I should hear only the least that could be told me. Not to appear prematurely curious, I kept away from Len’s cabin for two or three days. Then I sauntered over. As I approached I heard screams so eerie, so full of anguish, that I ran staggeringly to the house and fell against the shut door. The windows had sheets pinned over them, and the door was carefully fastened with an inside bar. Years passed, it seemed, before Serena came to the door and made an aperture large enough to admit of her passage onto the porch.

“It ain’t nobody but pore little Viny,” she said. “Do you want to come in and see her?”

“Can I help you?” I asked faintly.

“No, there kain’t anybody do fer her but me. She told me before she took her spell what to do. I’ve got to git back to her now, but me an’ Len’ll be over to see you after supper.”

I walked feebly homeward, and waited. Serena and Len came a little late. She explained this by saying: “I have to be sort o’ behind with my supper ever’ other day now. Viny don’t git over her spell till it’s turned five o’clock. You know we’ve been tellin’ you for a long time about Uncle Mace Morgan’s girl, Viny.”

So they had, I dimly recalled.

“She’s been wantin’ to come an’ live with us ever sence her mother died a year ago, an’ Uncle Mace brought her up the mountain Wednesday, with her bed an’ things.”

No longer dimly, but in a flash of apprehensive light, I recalled the story of Viny Morgan. She was a cousin of Serena’s. When a child of thirteen, she had been the victim of a disease that had left her with a withered leg. The youngest of her family, and of an endearing disposition, she had tripped about happily on crutches until she was twenty-one. At that age she was stricken by a malady that produced acute crises of pain. As the years passed the pain increased and the crises came in regular periods every other day. For hours she would struggle in a crazed, semiconscious way, and only her mother could “manage” her at these times. After the mother’s death, the father did what he could for his daughter, while he kept looking about distractedly for some one to relieve him. Serena had the courage and the kindness, but deferred her consent, I think because she and Len in some vague way forefelt my protest.

“You know, Mis’ Dolly,” said Serena, “after you told me I ought to take boarders an’ git pay fer keepin’ folks, I thought ef there was anybody in the world I ought to take it was pore little Viny. She’s goin’ to give me five dollars a week, an’ she ain’t a bit of trouble only ever’ other day when she has her spell. Hit comes on around one o’clock an’ stays till about five, jest four hours is all it is, an’ I don’t have to do anything but set by her an’ rub her, an’ keep her from bitin’ me when the pain gits so bad she’s out an’ out crazy.”

“Serena, are you telling me that you can sit by her and hear her scream like that for four hours?”

“Her mother done it fer twenty year, an’ it wuz harder fer her than fer me. Somebody’s got to take keer of her, an’ Uncle Mace is mighty nigh dead over it. He kain’t hold out like a woman. Five dollars a week’ll hep us a lot. You can git them cloaks you wanted fer the childern, now I’ve got a way to pay you. Ef I can earn it adoin’ what the Lord tells us is our duty, I’m glad o’ the chaince. ’Fore you make up your mind about it, Mis’ Dolly, I want you to come an’ see Viny. Come when she’s feelin’ good, so you can get acquainted. The young-uns are plum foolish about her, an’ I kain’t keep ’em off her bed.”

“Where is her bed, Serena?”

“It’s in the corner by the fireplace. It scrouges us a little, but Len fixed a bench at the foot o’ the bed, an’ the childern set on that an’ keep warm. There wuzn’t room fer Viny’s bed ’twixt mine and the girls’. Viny is shore sociable an’s been wonderin’ when you’ll come to see her. She can crochet the purtiest, an’ gits money fer it, but Uncle Mace don’t know it. Her mother left her a hundred dollars, all in five-dollar gold pieces, that she’d saved up aslippin’ eggs to the store, an’ sellin’ off chickens quiet, an’ makin’ rugs fer them summer folks at Carson. She told Viny to git more ef she could, an’ go to the hospital with it. Uncle Mace never would hear to her goin’, an’ that’s why Viny won’t tell him about the money. He says she’ll never come back alive, an’ he’s agin the hospital awful. He b’lieves the devil gits inter pore innercent Viny to punish him fer some meanness he done onct, an’ he says God will drive it out in His own time. I told him it looked like God would ’a’ put it in him ’stead o’ Viny, an’ he said it hurt him worse fer Viny to have it, an’ he had to work, bein’ a man. ‘You’re too old to work now,’ I told him, ‘an’ maybe if you prayed hard, the Lord would put it inter you an’ let Viny off fer a while,’ but he said it wuz best to let God work it out in his own way. Viny, though, she kinder wants to try the hospital, an’ that’s why she won’t tell him about the money. You’ll take to the pore little thing soon as you look at her, Mis’ Dolly. Len said the day Uncle Mace brought her up the mountain that we ought to go an’ see you first, but I told him I’d lived by you long enough to know what you’d say ’thout askin’.”

Her eyes were bright with appeal. Len was straining anxiously over her shoulder. What could I do but beat down my anti-Samaritan intellect and surrender them to their own undoing? I don’t remember what I said, but when they left me, and I held the lamp to light them across the little bridge in the yard, I saw that they were walking hand in hand, as they liked to do when sharing a supreme pleasure.

IV

I went to see Viny.

They had helped her from her bed to the fireside, and she talked, softly eager, while her slim hands were busy with a needle and Serena’s quilt-scraps. Without a knowledge of her age, I should have taken her for a frail girl in her twenties. She had the profound gentleness and mystic smile of one recently released from intolerable pain. They were all proud of her. Lonie took her advice as to the pattern of a new dress. Ned brought her an enormous apple whose keeping qualities he had been testing. Len came to the house for a drink when he could more easily have gone to the spring, because he had thought of something that would make Viny laugh.

Her illness was not mentioned until some one spoke of her mother’s long devotion. Then her warm, hazel eyes were lit with idolatry.

“At first,” she said, “my attacks come hit or miss, and it was awfully hard for mother to plan her work. She had everything to do at home, and no help except father. They were all married off but me. I prayed fer my spells to come reg’lar, and after a while they did. Then mother could lay out her work, and get on all right.”

Her disease was terribly real, there was no doubt of that; but I wondered if, through concern for her mother, she had actually psychologized her crises into periodicity.

When I left the house Serena accompanied me a few steps. Len joined us, eager to know what I thought of Viny, and it was easy to say all that they were longing to hear.

“I knowed you’d like her,” said Serena. “She offered me one of her five-dollar gold pieces to-day, an’ I was ashamed to look at it, knowin’ all about her savin’ up fer the hospital. I made her put it back in that little bag she carries her money in. She don’t eat but onct a day. Then it’s only a little butter an’ a ’tater. I couldn’t think o’ chargin’ her fer a ’tater. Sometimes she’ll taste an egg, but she brought three hens, an’ I git more o’ the eggs than she does. She brought her own bed an’ kivers, so I kain’t charge her fer sleepin’. She lays there, not botherin’ anybody, an’ ever’ other day when she’s not out of her mind, she heps me piece quilts, an’ I kain’t tell you the things she’s patched.”

“Perhaps you ought to pay her, Serena,” I said, but the irony did not penetrate.

“She wouldn’t let me do that. She says it’s only right fer her to hep me. No, she wouldn’t take pay fer piecin’ an’ patchin’.”

I was about to ask Serena why she couldn’t let Viny pay her for the service she received, but happily for me, I was forestalled by Len.

“Anybody,” he said, “that would take pay from Viny fer the leetle mite she eats would be so stingy they’d screak. An’ Reenie kain’t charge fer waitin’ on her. Ef there’s anything plain in the Bible it’s how we ought to take keer o’ the sick.”

“About them cloaks, Mis’ Dolly, you got fer Ray an’ Lissie,” Serena remembered to say, “I’ve studied out how I can pay you back by makin’ a fire an’ milkin’ fer you when the weather’s bad. I reckon that would suit you same as money.”

“Oh, a lot better, Serena!”

“I thought you’d like that,” she said, with a countenance as joyful as if the debt were already paid.

As the weeks passed I found there was only one objection to Viny as a member of the household. Her “bad day” interfered with company, particularly if it fell on Saturday or Sunday. During her attacks, light and sound were like blows, and before entering on her torture she would implore Serena to keep the room darkened and silent. This meant that family and guests had to crowd around the little kitchen stove, impossibly subdued, until Viny “come out of it.” At those times I avoided the house and its immediate region. Never in my life had I watched the calendar so closely, fearing that I might make a mistake and hear those screams again. But once I ventured over on a “bad day,” waiting until five o’clock, when Viny would be “getting through.” I listened and heard only a low moaning. Serena let me in. Viny’s pretty head was weaving agonizedly, and in her broken moans I could distinguish an anguished appeal for help. “She’s bearable easy now,” said Serena, returning to the task of rubbing her patient’s head and arms and back.

I went to the bed and looked at Viny. Of her eyes, only the whites could be seen. It was hard to believe that within an hour they would be soft, dark, intelligent. The sight was too ghastly, and I retreated to the porch. After a few moments Serena came out.

“She’s still now,” she said. “She’ll lay there quiet fer haf an hour, then she’ll be all right, only awful weak.”

I looked closely at Serena. It was clear that she was failing. “You can’t hold up at this,” I said, grasping at the commonplace.

“I could ef folks would change off with me onct in a while. I could hold up fine. But what you reckon that ol’ Ann Hite said when I sent her word I’d wash fer her ef she’d come an’ stay with Viny jest once? She said it ’ud take a year’s washin’ to pay fer that.”

“Serena,” I said, firmly defensive, “you needn’t look about for people as good as you are. They don’t exist.”

“I tried to slip out from Viny the last time, an’ let Lonie stay with her, but it wuzn’t more’n two er three minutes ’fore Lonie come runnin’ out cryin’, an’ showed me her wrist bleedin’ where Viny bit her. Viny cried awful about it when she come to, but Lonie won’t try it any more, so I’ll jest keep at it. I ain’t got to come over an’ hep you any ’bout milkin’ an’ makin’ fires, but you see how it is, an’ I reckon you don’t blame me. I’m studyin’ out how I’ll pay you some time.”

“Don’t speak of it again, Serena,” I replied, thankful to have escaped the degradation of lying in bed and letting her come around the curve in the freezing weather to milk for me.

A month, perhaps, went by, and the influenza began to climb the mountain. As it drew nearer, I thought of Len’s household, with two invalids already in the crowded cabin, and the prospect took my breath. One morning about daylight I heard Len’s voice calling me, and hurried down the stairs to hear the worst.

“Reenie wuz took last night. Looks like she’s goin’ to git bad off. An’ I’ve come to ast you whatever’ll I do about Viny?”

“Is this her bad day, Len?”

“No, that thing don’t tech her till to-morr’.”

I knew what he was expecting me to say, but I launched a surprise that astounded him.

“Then hitch up as quickly as you can, put her things in the wagon, and take her back to her father.”

His lips made two or three quivering attempts at speech. “I thought maybe you’d——”

“No, Len. I can’t take care of Viny. I won’t take care of Viny. And the only thing you can do about it is to take her back to her father.”

“I reckon I’ll have to,” he said, in dazed dejection.

“How long will it take you to get off?”

He glanced at the first rays of the sun, then said: “Two hours’ll do.”

“Then in two hours I will be over to say good-by to Viny and take care of Serena until you get back.”

He went, his long, stooped back plainly telling me that I had been weighed in the balance and struck the beam of heaven.

For about two weeks I was kept in close attendance on Serena and the children. Just as they were getting up, it came my turn to go down. Neighbors, far and near, were ready with kind help, but it was not until Serena walked in, a little pale yet from her own convalescence, and looked down at me with her blue eyes almost hazel dark with feeling, that the temperature of the pillow under my head dropped to a hopeful point. The bland movements of her hands seemed to be fulfilling an old desire. Behind her was the generation of Uncle Lish, who could sit and sing till the fire was out; and hovering with her presence was the never-defined equation that rescues from loneliness the edge of the grave. It did not trouble me to know that on my recovery I was going to be as foolish about Serena as Len and her children.

After I could sit in my chair, it was as good as hearing gentle music just to see her on the other side of the fire, her hands in her lap, with the placidity of eternity doing nothing at all. One day she spoke of Viny.

“I reckon you was right about Viny. I didn’t know how scrouged we wuz till I got to stayin’ over here with you. Seems like they’s more’n as many agin of us now, an’ when we all try to git around the fire, some of us kain’t see the blaze, let alone feel it. When they’s company the childern have to set back so fur they’re too cold to git their lessons.”

It was then that the vague trouble about those two unbuilt rooms crystallized in my mind with unbearable clearness. By some economical turn or twist, I would get them put up.

“Serena,” I said, “I’m going to have enough lumber hauled up the mountain to make two more rooms at your house, and I’ll have Cleve Saunders build them if Len can’t get the time.”

“Oh,” she cried joyously, “me an’ Len wuz sayin’ last night how fine that would be! I reckon he’d better not go after pore little Viny till you git ’em done.”