Long before the hour, the Brown house was filled with people; others gathered in little knots about the yard. Men exchanged views of the crop prospects, and occasionally when the drone of the bees in the lilacs and the creak of the buggies in the lane ceased for a moment, a remark like “That sod field ought to go fifty bushel to the acre,” sounded irrelevantly across the
yard. The women talked only of the deceased—when she had taken the turn, how she had said good-bye to the children the last night and sent them off to bed with a smile, then gone completely out of her mind in the bitterness of it—and how hard it was going to be for Jim. He was just getting ready to build a barn too; a pile of gravel a few yards from the back door was evidence of its progress—it seemed hard, just when they were getting along so well. And he had done all for her that a man could do. He had even had her to the sanitarium; but it was no use—once you got consumption there was just one thing to wait for. They reviewed the lives and deaths of her ancestors to see where she had inherited it, but could find no trace of the trouble for three generations back. She had always been so smart and strong, too. Why, when she was first married she could do as much as any other two women in the neighborhood.
The old doctor, friend and terror of the community, stopped to shake hands with a strong, honest-looking young fellow leaning against the fence.
“Pretty hard, eh?” he remarked nodding towards the house.
“Sure is. It’s a bad thing to let get hold of you. I know from experience. I worked in the city for a couple of years in a wholesale house once. Got a notion I didn’t like farming, you
know, like lots of other young fellows do—and I believe if I’d stayed there a year longer, cooped up in a cage breathing the dust and smoke of the place, I’d never got back at all. But I got out of it in time. I’m out in the field now ten hours a day. I eat like a horse and I’ll bet you couldn’t find a spot on my lungs with the point of a needle. I’m always glad I was able to bring Hazel out to the farm. She gets tired of it sometimes, after always being in a store, but I tell her it’s the healthiest place this side of Switzerland—all the fresh air there is clean off the fields, and the best place in the world to bring up children.”
“Isn’t turning out very well for these kids here.”
“Losing their mother?—No.”
“There’s always that chance.”
“There is anywhere. What do you mean?”