FullReads

It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of butterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big flies buzzed and mumbled on the pane.

“What ails your mother?” Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at Sadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.

“Oh, I dunno,” Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.

Lily insisted.

“She ‘n’ pa’s had an awful row–“

“Sadie!” said the teacher, warningly, “what language!”

“I mean they quarrelled, an’ she don’t speak to him any more.”

“Why, how dreadful!”

“An’ pa, he’s awful cross; and she won’t eat when he does, an’ I haf to wait on table.”

“I believe I’ll go down and see her this noon,” said Lily to herself, as she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.

V

Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him. He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just about ready to go when Lily spoke to him.

“Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It must be time to go to dinner,–aren’t you ready to go? I want to talk with you.”

Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down the road with the schoolma’am, but there was something in her look which seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he was not in good humor.

“Yes, in a minnit–soon’s I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b’lieve, would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in.”

He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn’t be rude to this sweet and fragile girl. If a man had dared to attack him on his domestic shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat.

“The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we can to make it less,” she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered abstraction–that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.

He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box, and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her talk.

“Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear with our–friends,” she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept silent.

“How is Mrs. Burns!” said Lily at length, determined to make him speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on is did not escape him.

“Oh, she’s all right–I mean she’s done her work jest the same as ever. I don’t see her much–“

“I didn’t know–I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting strangely.”

“No, she’s well enough–but–“

“But what is the trouble? Won’t you let me help you, won’t you?” she pleaded.

“Can’t anybody help us. We’ve got ‘o fight it out, I s’pose,” he replied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping into his voice. “She’s ben in a devil of a temper f’r a week.”

“Haven’t you been in the same kind of a temper too?” demanded Lily, firmly but kindly. “I think most troubles of this kind come from bad temper on both sides. Don’t you? Have you done your share at being kind and patient?”

They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as if a giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyes seemed pools of tears.