Enoch slapped the lines on the gray's callous back.
"I don't know, Rachel," he said; "there are some subjects which I do not find profitable for reflection."
EM.
I.
Mrs. Wickersham helped her son from his bed to a chair on the porch, and spread a patchwork quilt over his knees when he was seated.
"Don't you want something to put your feet on, Benny?" she asked anxiously, with that hunger for servitude with which women persecute their male sick.
The invalid looked down at his feet helplessly, and then turned his eyes toward the stretch of barley-stubble below the vineyard. A stack of baled hay in the middle of the field cast a dense black shadow in the afternoon sun.
"No, I guess not," he said absently. "Has Lawson sent any word about the hay?"
"He said he'd come and look at it in a day or two."