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“I was wondering,” said Roger coolly, “if Father ever looked at her across the table and wished she were prettier.”

Catherine giggled. Her giggle was ugly and disagreeable like everything else about her–everything except a certain odd, loving, loyal old heart buried deep in her bosom, for the sake of which Roger endured the giggle and all the rest.

“Dessay he did–dessay he did. Men al’ays has a hankerin’ for good looks. But ye’ve got to cut yer coat ‘cording to yer cloth. As for yer poor ma, she didn’t live long enough to git as ugly as me. When I come here to keep house for yer pa, folks said as it wouldn’t be long ‘fore he married me. I wouldn’t a-minded. But yer pa never hinted it. S’pose he’d had enough of ugly women likely.”

Catherine snorted amiably again. Roger got up–he couldn’t endure any more just then. He must escape.

“Now you think over what I’ve said,” his aunt called after him. “Ye’ve gotter git a wife soon, however ye manage it. ‘Twon’t be so hard if ye’re reasonable. Don’t stay out as late as ye did last night. Ye coughed all night. Where was ye–down at the shore?”

“No,” said Roger, who always answered her questions even when he hated to. “I was down at Aunt Isabel’s grave.”

“Till eleven o’clock! Ye ain’t wise! I dunno what hankering ye have after that unchancy place. I ain’t been near it for twenty year. I wonder ye ain’t scairt. What’d ye think ye’d do if ye saw her ghost?”

Catherine looked curiously at Roger. She was very superstitious and she believed firmly in ghosts, and saw no absurdity in her question.

“I wish I could see it,” said Roger, his great eyes flashing. He believed in ghosts too, at least in Isabel Temple’s ghost. His uncle had seen it; his grandfather had seen it; he believed he would see it–the beautiful, bewitching, mocking, luring ghost of lovely Isabel Temple.

“Don’t wish such stuff,” said Catherine. “Nobody ain’t never the same after they’ve seen her.”

“Was Uncle different?” Roger had come back into the kitchen and was looking curiously at his aunt.

“Diff’rent? He was another man. He didn’t even look the same. Sich eyes! Al’ays looking past ye at something behind ye. They’d give anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after that–said a man wouldn’t, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with him–he wa’n’t canny, that was all there was to it. You keep away from that grave–you don’t want to look odder than ye are by nature. And when ye git married, ye’ll have to give up roamin’ about half the night in graveyards. A wife wouldn’t put up with it, as I’ve done.”

“I’ll never get as good a wife as you, Aunt Catherine,” said Roger with a little whimsical smile that gave him the look of an amused gnome.

“Dessay you won’t. But someone ye have to have. Why’n’t ye try ‘Liza Adams. She might have ye–she’s gittin’ on.”

“‘Liza … Adams!”

“That’s what I said. Ye needn’t repeat it–‘Liza … Adams–‘s if I’d mentioned a hippopotamus. I git out of patience with ye. I b’lieve in my heart ye think ye ought to git a wife that’d look like a picter.”

“I do, Aunt Catherine. That’s just the kind of wife I want–grace and beauty and charm. Nothing less than that will ever content me.”

* * * * *

Roger laughed bitterly again and went out. It was sunset. There was no work to do that night except to milk the cows, and his little home boy could do that. He felt a glad freedom. He put his hand in his pocket to see if his beloved Wordsworth was there and then he took his way across the fields, under a sky of purple and amber, walking quickly despite his limp. He wanted to get to some solitary place where he could forget Aunt Catherine and her abominable suggestions and escape into the world of dreams where he habitually lived and where he found the loveliness he had not found nor could hope to find in his real world.