“That appears to be pretty accurate,” he thought. “Wonder how the Kid comes to know things.”
He swung on enjoying the growth of vigor, the endless, open, travelled road, and the wind blowing across his face.
SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS
Back Meadows lies three miles to the northwest of Hagar, rich bottom-lands in Sanderson Hollow, and the Cattle Ridge shelters it on the north. Five generations of Sandersons have added to the Sanderson accumulation of this world's goods, without sensible interference on the part of moths or rust or thieves that break through and steal. Cool, quiet men, slow of speech and persistent of mood, they prospered and lived well where other families, desiring too many things or not desiring anything enough, found nothing at all desirable and drifted away. The speculative traveller, hunting “abandoned farms,” or studying the problem of the future of New England's outlying districts, who should stand on the crest of the Cattle Ridge overlooking the sheltered valley, would note it as an instance of the problem satisfactorily solved and of a farm which, so far from abandonment, smiled over all its comfortable expanse in the consciousness of past and certainty of future occupancy. These were ready illustrations for his thesis, if he had one: the smooth meadows, square stone walls and herds of fawn-colored cattle, large bams and long stables of the famous Sanderson stud; also the white gabled house among the maples with spreading ells on either side, suggesting a position taken with foresight and carefully guarded and secured—a house that, recognizing the uncertainties and drifting currents of the world, had acted accordingly, and now could afford to consider itself complacently. The soul of any individual Sanderson might be required of him, and his wisdom relative to eternity be demonstrated folly, but the policy of the Sanderson family had not so far been considered altogether an individual matter. Even individually, if the question of such inversion of terms ever occurred to a Sanderson, it only led to the conclusion that it was strictly a Pickwickian usage, and, in the ordinary course of language, the policy of building barns, stowing away goods and reflecting complacently thereon, still came under the head of wisdom.
Mrs. Cullom Sanderson, sister of Israel Sanderson of the last generation and married into a distant branch of the Sanderson family, carried her materialism with an unconscious and eccentric frankness that prevented the family from recognizing in her a peculiar development of its own quality. When Israel's gentle wife passed from a world which she had found too full of unanswered questions, it was Mrs. Cullom who plunged bulkily into the chamber of the great mystery and stopped, gulping with astonishment.
“I just made her some blanc-mange,” she gasped. “Isn't that too bad! Why, Israel!”
Israel turned from the window and contemplated her gravely with his hands clasped behind him.
“I think you had better move down to the Meadows, Ellen,” he said. “If you will contrive to say as little as possible to me about Marian, and one or two other matters I will specify, we shall get along very well.”