Clover and Blue Grass

by Eliza Calvert Hall

"I don't care how it looked," said Sarah fretfully, "we were in our right place there, and we're out of place here. When we lived in Millville, I'd get up in the morning, and I knew just exactly what I'd have to do, and I knew I could do whatever I had to do. But now—" She made a gesture of unutterable despair—"Why, I hate to open my eyes, I hate to get up, I hate to think there's another day before me, for I'm certain there'll be things to do that I never did before, and don't know how to do and don't want to do, even if I knew how. People come to see me and they talk about things I never heard of, and ask me to do things I can't do, and I feel just exactly as if I was caught in some kind of a cage and couldn't get out. There was that Mrs. Emerson—she wanted me to join a club she belongs to. She said it used to be a literary club, but that they'd changed their plans, and, instead of writin' papers, they'd decided to do civic work."

She paused in her passionate confession and turned abruptly to David with a look of self-scorn that was tragic in its intensity. "Do you know what 'civic work' is, David?" David did not answer at once.

"Why, no, Sarah, I can't say I do," he said cautiously. "It seems to me I've seen that word somewhere, and maybe I could think up what it means, if you'd give me time to—"

Sarah cut him short. "You don't know what that word means, David, and neither do I," she said with studied calmness.

David was genuinely puzzled by Sarah's evident distress over so unimportant a circumstance as the meaning of a word. "Honey," he said tenderly, "I'll go right down town and buy you a dictionary, so you can find out what that word means. But what difference does it make, anyhow?"

Once more his wife turned on him a face that was like a mask of tragedy. "What difference does it make?" she wailed. "Oh, David! Can't you see? Can't you understand? There I sat—in my own house—like a fool—not knowin' what answer to give her, just because I didn't know what that word meant! And every day something like this happens, something that makes me feel that I'm out of place, something that makes me hate myself! Can't you understand?"

Yes, David understood as well as a man could be expected to understand a woman. Many times since Fortune had smiled on him, he had been thrown with men of superior education and social position and had known momentarily the feeling of being out of place. And if Sarah's passionate words failed to convey all she felt and suffered, the despair in her eyes and the nervous twitching of her fingers brought comprehension to her husband's mind.

"There! There!" he soothed, taking her hands in his. "You mustn't carry on this way, Sarah, or I'll have to send for the doctor again. Just give me time to think; there must be a way out of this trouble. My goodness!" He shook his head in helpless wonderment over the strange situation. "I thought we'd be through with troubles when we got rich, but it looks as if this money's the most trouble we ever had."

"It wouldn't be a trouble if we were used to it," explained Sarah. "We were born poor, and we've lived poor all our lives, and we don't know how to get happiness out of money."

David sighed. "We can't go back to Millville to live," he said thoughtfully. "At least we can't get back our old place." Sarah's face was already clouded, but at these words a deeper shadow passed over it. She had known, when she left the Millville house, that the owner of the property intended tearing down the cottage and building a tenement house for the mill-workers, and every time she thought of her house in ruins, she had a dull heartache. "I never hankered after riches," mused David, his mind still occupied with the mysterious ways of the Providence that had made him rich. "I never even tried to invent that machine. It just seemed to come to me, without any thinkin' or tryin' on my part; and when I patented the thing, I never supposed it would do any more than make us fairly comfortable in our old age. But here's the money comin' in all the time; it's ours, and it's honest money, and we've got to take it and make the best of it. But," tenderly, "I'm not goin' to let it worry you to death if I can help it. What is it that bothers you most, honey?"