'I laid that thought to my heart like something cool and comforting. And it helped me to come through.
'When I got back to the house, it was late and everybody was abed but my father. He was sitting right here where we are, waiting up for me. There was a moon, some past the full, rising yonder. I sat down on the step below him and put it to him straight.
'"Father," said I, "Dick’s in love with Cynthy. She’s eighteen an’ he’s twenty. I judge we’d better help 'em marry."
'He give a heartbroken kind of groan. "Don’t I know she’s eighteen?" he said. "Ain’t it worryin' the life right out of me?"
'"Whatever do you mean?" I asked pretty sharp, for I sensed bad trouble in his very voice.
'"It’s her two thousand dollars," he said. "She’s due to have it. If she marries, she’s got to have it right away. And I ain’t got it to give her, that’s all!"
'"Where is it? What’s become of it?"
'"I bought the store at the Crossroads with it, and give her my note. But I hadn’t no business to do it that way. And the store ain’t done well, and the farm ain’t done well. The summer’s been so cold and wet, corn ain’t more 'n a third of a crop, and I put in mainly corn this year. I can’t sell the store. I dunno’s I can mortgage the farm. I dunno what to do. If you leave home like you talk of, I shall go under. Somebody’s got to take hold an’ help me. I can’t carry my load no longer."
'So—there was that! And I had to face it alone.
'I didn’t despair over the money part of it, like father did. I knew he’d neglected the farm for the store, and the store for the farm. If I’d been with him either place, instead of teaching, things would have gone on all right. I thought Dick could have his choice of the store or a part of the land to clear up the debt to Cynthy. But, whichever he took, father’d need me to help out. I could see he was beginning to break. And Dick would need me too, till he got broke in to work and earnin'. So—now it was me that life had in the net, and there was no way I could break out.