The whole thing will come to you some day." "Oh, yes.Maria got her share, and Wyndham has made ducks and drakes of it." "Your grandfather's aging, too, isn't he?""Rather," returned Will, with a curious mixture of amiable lightness and cool brutality."He's gone off at least twenty years since that time I had pneumonia in your barn.That wrecked him, Aunt Saidie says, and all because he knew he'd have to put up with you when the doctor told him to let me have my way.His temper gets worse, too, all the time.I declare, he sometimes makes me wish he were dead and buried." "Oh, he'll live long enough yet, never fear--those wiry, cross-grained people are as tough as lightwood knots.It's a pity, though, he wants to bully you like that--it would kill me in a day." A flush mounted to Will's forehead."I knew you'd think so," he said, "and it's what I tell him all the time.He's got no business meddling with me so much, and I won't stand it." "He ought to get a dog," suggested Christopher indifferently."Well, I'm not a dog, and I'll make him understand it yet.Oh, you think I'm an awful milksop, of course, but I'll show you otherwise some day.I'd like to know if you could have done any better in my place?" "Done! Why, Ishouldn't have been in your place long, that's all." "I shan't, either, for that matter; but I've got to humour him a little, you see, because he holds the purse-strings." "He'd never go so far as to kick you out, would he?" "Well, hardly.I'm all he has, you know.He doesn't like Maria because of her fine airs, much as he thinks of education.I've got to be a gentleman, he says; but as for him, he wouldn't give up one of his vulgar habits to save anybody's soul.His trouble with Maria all came of her reproving him for drinking out of his saucer.Now, I don't mind that kind of thing so much, but Maria used to say she'd rather have him steal, any day, than gulp his coffee.Why are you laughing so?""Oh, nothing.Are you going to Tom's now? I've got to work." Will slid down from the big box and sauntered toward the door, pausing on the little wooden step to light a cigarette."Drop in if you get a chance," he threw back over his shoulder, with a puff of smoke.In a few moments Christopher finished his work, and, coming outside, closed the stable door.Then he walked a few paces along the little path stopping from time to time to gaze across the darkening landscape.A light mist was wreathed about the tops of the old lilac-bushes, where it glimmered so indistinctly that it seemed as if one might dispel it by a breath; and farther away the soft evening colours had settled over the great fields, beyond which a clear yellow line was just visible above the distant woods.The wind was sharp with an edge of frost, and as it blew into his face he raised his head and drank long, invigorating drafts.From the cattle-pen hard by he smelled the fresh breath of the cows, and around him were those other odours, vague, familiar, pleasant, which are loosened at twilight in the open country.The time had been when the mere physical contact with the air would have filled him with a quiet satisfaction, but during the last four years he had lost gradually his sensitiveness to external things--to the changes of the seasons as to the beauties of an autumn sunrise.A clear morning had ceased to arouse in him the old buoyant energy, and he had lost the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten his labour in the fields.It was as if a clog fettered his simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his family.With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted.There were times, even, when he grew almost suspicious of Cynthia's patience, and at such moments his irritation was manifested in a sullen reserve.To himself he could give no explanation of his state of mind; he knew merely that he retreated day by day farther into the shadow of his loneliness, and that, while in his heart he still craved human sympathy, an expression of it even from those he loved was, above all, the thing he most bitterly resented.A light flashed in the kitchen, and he went on slowly toward the house.As he reached the back porch he saw that Lila was sitting at the kitchen window looking wearily out into the dusk.The firelight scintillated in her eyes, and as she turned quickly at a sound within the room he noticed with a pang that the sparkles were caused by teardrops on her lashes.His heart quickened at the sight of her drooping figure, and an impulse seized him to go in and comfort her at any cost.Then his severe constraint laid an icy hold upon him, and he hesitated with his hand upon the door.
"If I go in and speak to her, what is there for me to say?" he thought, overcome by his horror of any uncontrolled emotion."We will merely go over the old complaints, the endless explanations.
