Perhaps because Nature is always working to keep her balance and save the race, Mary Withers was made of an entirely different kind of clay. When she followed her husband out to the porch to-night it was under the strain of preparation for one of the thousand battles which, with her gentle, appealing logic, she tried to fight for her children. Her intercessions were never of any avail, but she was no strategist and she knew no other tactics. Moreover she had never been trained to fight. She had come to Dan with no experience outside the shelter of a rosemary, white-linen home, and he had taken the heart
out of her so suddenly and overwhelmingly directly after, that she was not likely to ever take any very radical initiative again.
She brought her mending to the porch with her. It was too dark to sew; but when she had to ask Dan for anything she always felt less nervous if she had something in her hands. It was hard to begin.
“The fall wheat yonder is coming on nicely,” she ventured cheerfully.
He pressed the hot tobacco into his pipe a little harder than was necessary.
“Oh, yes,” he conceded after some deliberation. “Things’ll come along nice enough, if a man slaves from one year’s end to the other without any help, like I’m fixed.”
“I thought perhaps you could get Jonas to help with the potatoes to-morrow. He isn’t working.”
“Oh, you did, did you? An’ while you were thinkin’ so active, did you think where the money was comin’ from to pay Jonas? I’ve throwed away enough good money hirin’ men. It don’t ever occur to you, I suppose, thet we’ve a boy of our own thet’s never done much to pay for his keep yet? He’s got to take holt now.”
“But he needs to be at school so badly, just now,” she ventured timidly. “The teacher called to-day to say she felt sure he’d pass this summer if he could get to school regularly from now on.”
“Well, you can tell the teacher for me, thet we ain’t makin’ no professor out o’ Bill. When I was ten year old I was harrowin’ an drivin’ team, doin’ a man’s work. There was no school for me except what I got in the winters. Spite o’ that, though, I ain’t such a fool as you take me for. I can see as far into a mill stone as them that picks it, an’ I ain’t more’n usual blind just now. You think what’s good enough fer me ain’t good enough fer Bill. You don’t care how hard I work so’s he can get to school an’ learn enough tomfoolery to get him a job thet he can clear out to, about the time he’s able to be some help. But you jest ain’t dealin’ with the right man. You’ve molly-coddled that young one long enough now. To-morrow he starts his career with me, an’ he’ll maybe think he’s struck fire an’ brimstone before the day’s over.”