The Old Gray Homestead

by Frances Parkinson Keyes

"How lovely the valley is!" she said aloud at last; "I don't believe there's a prettier stretch of road in the whole world than this between Wallacetown and Hamstead, especially in the spring, when the river is so high, and everything is looking so fresh and green."

"Fortunate it is pretty; probably it's the only thing we'll have to look at as long as we live—and certainly it's about all we've seen so far! If there'd been only you and I, Sally, we could have gone off to school, and maybe to college, too, but with eight of us to feed and clothe, it's no wonder that father is dead sunk in debt! Certainly I shan't travel much," he added, laughing bitterly, "when he thinks we can't have even one hired man in the future—and certainly you won't either, if you're fool enough to marry Fred, and go straight from the frying-pan of one poverty-stricken home to the fire of another!"

"Oh, Austin, it's wrong of you to talk so! I'm going to be ever so happy!"

"Wrong! How else do you expect me to talk?—if I talk at all! Doesn't it mean anything to you that the farm's mortgaged to the very last cent, and that it doesn't begin to produce what it ought to because we can't beg, borrow, or steal the money that ought to be put into it? Can you just shut your eyes to the fact that the house—the finest in the county when Grandfather Gray built it—is falling to pieces for want of necessary repairs? And look at our barns and sheds—or don't look at them if you can help it! Doesn't it gall you to dress as you do, because you have to turn over most of what you can earn teaching to the family—of course, you never can earn much, because you haven't had a good enough education yourself to get a first-class position—so that the younger girls can go to school at all, instead of going out as hired help? Can't you feel the injustice of being poor, and dirty, and ignorant, when thousands of other people are just rotten with money?"

"I've heard of such people, but I've never met any of them around here," returned his sister quietly. "We're no worse off than lots of people, better off than some. I think we've got a good deal to be thankful for, living where we can see green things growing, and being well, and having a mother like ours. I wish you could come to feel that way. Perhaps you will some day."

"Why don't you marry Fred's cousin, instead of Fred?" asked her brother, changing the subject abruptly. "You could get him just as easy as not—I could see that when he was here last summer. Then you could go to Boston to live, get something out of life yourself, and help your family, too."

"No one in the family but you would want help from me—at that price," returned Sally, still speaking quietly, but betraying by the slight unevenness of her voice that her quiet spirit was at last disturbed more than she cared to show. "Why, Austin, you know how I lo—care for Fred, and that I gave him my word more than two years ago! Besides, I heard you say yourself, before you knew he fancied me, that Hugh Elliott drank—and did all sorts of other dreadful things—he wouldn't be considered respectable in Hamstead."

Austin laughed again. "All right. I won't bring up the subject again. Ten years from now you may be sorry you wouldn't put up with an occasional spree, and sacrifice a silly little love-affair, for the sake of everything else you'd get. But suit yourself. Cook and wash and iron and scrub, lose your color and your figure and your disposition, and bring half-a-dozen children into the world with no better heritage than that, if it's your idea of bliss—and it seems to be!"

"I didn't mean to be cross, Sally," he said, after they had driven along in heavy silence for some minutes. "I've been trying to do a little business for father in White Water to-day, and met with my usual run of luck—none at all. Here comes one of the livery-stable teams ploughing towards us through the mud. Who's in it, do you suppose? Doesn't look familiar, some way."

As the livery-stable in Hamstead boasted only four turn-outs, it was not strange that Austin recognized one of them at sight, and as strangers were few and far between, they were objects of considerable interest.