"What do you mean?"
"The struggle is too hard. I can't stand it. I'm hungry for the country again. Let's get out of this."
"Where'll we go?"
"Back to my native town—up among the Wisconsin hills and coulies. Go anywhere, so that we escape this pressure—it's killing me. Let's go to Bluff Siding for a year. It will do me good—may bring me back to life. I can do enough special work to pay our grocery bill; and the Merrill place—so Jack tells me—is empty. We can get it for seventy-five dollars for a year. We can pull through some way."
"Very well, Robert."
"I must have rest. All the bounce has gone out of me, Mate," he said, with sad lines in his face. "Any extra work here is out of the question. I can only shamble around—an excuse for a man."
The wife had ceased to smile. Her strenuous cheerfulness could not hold before his tragically drawn and bloodless face.
"I'll go wherever you think best, Robert. It will be just as well for the boys. I suppose there is a school there?"
"Oh, yes. At any rate, they can get a year's schooling in nature."
"Well—no matter, Robert; you are the one to be considered." She had the self-sacrificing devotion of the average woman. She fancied herself hopelessly his inferior.