“You want to keep that for Jean, don’t you?”
“I do want her to go on to school. I want her to learn some way of making her living. And if Jean should ever get married——”
“Oh, Jove, we’ll not let her get married,” he exploded with a determination born of his own limited and bitter observation. “I certainly don’t believe in getting married—for girls.”
It took more than Billy’s inexperienced force of argument to persuade his mother that he would not be happy anywhere but at home for the next few months—that the farm was suffering for his attention anyway. When she did agree to his plan it was because she found that in some things
he was absolutely immovable. He could be steered easily enough to a certain point; after that all the winds of heaven couldn’t influence his course. Even the disturbing visitations of the vision of the satin-shod idol, never once suggested the idea that he might go back.
CHAPTER VI.
“That a girl may make five dollars a day in a canning club during the summer, or a boy win a prize of one hundred dollars for feeding a baby beef, is one of the lesser advantages of the great national movement which has caught the imaginative enthusiasm of the Young Generation. It is really leading the way to a finer community life. Many of us remember the old-fashioned chicken suppers in the basement of the church, where the boys sat on the benches by themselves, while the girls looked pityingly and shyly across the intervening space. The club boys and girls in this great industrial college, allied artists in the creation of a better country life, are changing all this. Nothing in rural life has ever been the medium of such good times.”—Stanley Johnson.
Dan heard of the intended visit to the city doctor with astonishment and annoyance. It wasn’t like Mary to want such a thing, and he attributed it to some more of Billy’s “higher life” ideas. He repeatedly unburdened his bitterness to Mary in Billy’s absence, that he had been fool enough to let him go to school just to come home with his superior ways. To outsiders he had a habit of remarking: “My boy, he’s in college now. Costs a good deal—an education, nowadays, but I want him to have the best I can give him.”
Regarding the consulting of a special doctor he openly disapproved, on the grounds that all a doctor hung out his sign for was to get people’s
money. He had never had a doctor in his life and he never would have one. The best rule he knew for health was to “forget it.” Then Billy came in and he stopped. When Mary came home at night and took up the threads of her work where she had dropped them in the morning, however, he rested more easily. He inquired, apparently amused at the whole affair, when she was going back again, and she said she didn’t have to go back. He reflected then, that it was only a “notion,” as he had supposed, and was satisfied.