Because of the note of pain, Coats drew his chair close to hers, touched her arm. "You've always done your best, Sue. I left you to bear most of the burden, but I've come back to it. I'm going to stay, Sue—it's going to be lifted from your shoulders to mine.... And I'm glad to be back. I belong here—I'm no money-maker. I'm fitted for just this—to draw a living out of the soil and enjoy doing it.... I can't expect help from Ann—she's bound to go out into the world and live—but you'll stand by me, Sue?"

The assurance Sue longed for had been given her. "Yes, I'll stand by you!" she said deeply. "I'll stand by you always, Coats—I'm fitted for just this, too."

XVII

COMPLEXITIES

The first of May, and spring had come on the Ridge. A young green lay upon pasture and woodland, upon every spot where nature was allowed her way—except the bald patches on the Mine Banks. They still glared a sullen red, defiantly barren, when even the plowed earth glistened and was warm, impatient under man's restraining hand, eager to quicken the seed being entrusted to it, a civilized mother as intent on bearing fruit as was her uncultured sister.

Those three weeks had brought the stir of life, both restlessness and joy, to Sue, to Ann, to Judith Westmore; and, as spring quickens man as well as woman, to Edward Westmore, Garvin and Baird the consciousness of things desired and not attained which is the urge to all accomplishment.

Even Coats Penniman, busied about the farm from early morning until night, was stirred by a vague unrest which was not unhappiness nor its opposite. He worked the harder for it; he had cast his net here; he meant to gather in the harvest, a modest harvest, but one that would be sufficient for his family's needs. New horses filled the stalls that had stood empty so long, new farm implements were stored in the wagon-shed, the barn acquired a coat of paint. And the crying shame of water carried by women up three hundred yards to a kitchen without a convenience was abolished. That was Coats' first improvement: pipes were laid to the bubbling spring and a pump installed; the spring-house, unsanitary relic of a past century, would no longer harbor crocks of milk and butter ill-protected from things that crawl and germs that fatten; it housed the pump. And only the weeping willows mourned the change; they no longer stood in a swamp, for a drain carried the seeping water to the creek; they were a pleasant shelter now for any man and maid who chose to sit beneath them.

Coats Penniman had his work and Sue had hers. The old house was being transformed. Many years before, Ann, playing with a forbidden pen-knife, had cut through the half-dozen layers of paper that generations of tasteless Pennimans had laid upon the living-room walls and had come to oak paneling as beautiful as any at Westmore. Sue had not forgotten the discovery. The living-room was stripped of paper and became again what it had been in colonial days, a spacious dining-room paneled from ceiling to floor. The modern front room, the parlor, lost its dingy figured paper, was hung and curtained in white, as were the rooms above. Sue, with Ann to help her, and a sturdy negress to do the heaviest work, labored joyfully. Paint and whitewash had their way with the old house, and it emerged an elderly lady still, but with white hair smoothed and wearing a spotless cap.

Only the lonely farm-woman who toils unaided, her interests bound by four unsightly walls, a veritable prison with a treadmill for diversion, can justly appreciate what those days of transformation were to Sue. She had longed for the two strong black hands that under her direction washed and churned and swept and cooked. But she had longed still more for a little beauty, a touch of fashion, a hint of luxury. Her day's work had always lapped over into the morrow. Now she could appear at supper with hair arranged and wearing a fresh gown. She could go from supper to sit with Coats on the porch and talk to him of her work as he talked to her of his. The delight of it!