"Yes, I guess it is," said she. "Father was a carpenter, and I've always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it is with them."
"Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores, to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on dirt. Goin' round and round in a circle, and never getting out."
"It's just the same for us women," she corroborated. "Think of us going around the house day after day, and doing just the same things over an' over, year after year! That's the whole of most women's lives. Dish-washing almost drives me crazy."
"I know it," said Albert; "but a fellow has t' do it. If his folks are workin' hard, why, of course he can't lay around and study. They're not to blame. I don't know that anybody's to blame."
"No, I don't; but it makes me sad to see mother going around as she does, day after day. She won't let me do as much as I would." The girl looked at her slender hands. "You see, I'm not very strong. It makes my heart ache to see her going around in that quiet, patient way; she's so good."
"I know, I know! I've felt just like that about my mother and father, too."
There was a long pause, full of deep feeling, and then the girl continued in a low, hesitating voice:
"Mother's had an awful hard time since father died. We had to go to keeping boarders, which was hard—very hard for mother." The boy felt a sympathetic lump in his throat as the girl went on again: "But she doesn't complain, and she didn't want me to come home from school; but of course I couldn't do anything else."
It didn't occur to either of them that any other course was open, nor that there was any heroism or self-sacrifice in the act; it was simply right.
"Well, I'm not going to drudge all my life," said the boy at last. "I know it's kind o' selfish, but I can't live on a farm; it 'u'd kill me in a year. I've made up my mind to study law and enter the bar. Lawyers manage to get hold of enough to live on decently, and that's more than you can say of the farmers. And they live in town, where something is going on once in a while, anyway."