"I beg your pardon, Ellen." Peter did not know that he had turned a page.
"Don't you ever wish for anything for yourself, Peter? Don't you wish you were rich?"
"No, Ellen, I don't know that I ever do."
But as the winter got on and the news of Ada Brown's engagement was confirmed, he must have wished it a great many times.
One evening late in January he was sitting with his mother very quietly by the kitchen stove, the front of which was opened to throw out the heat; there was the good smell of the supper in the room, for though he had a meal with the Greenslets at six, his mother always made a point of having something hot for him when he came in from bedding down the mare, and the steam of it on the window-panes made dull smears of the reflected light. The shade of the lamp was drawn down until the ceiling of the room was all in shadow save for the bright escape from the chimney which shone directly overhead, round and yellow as twenty dollars, and as Peter leaned back in his chair, looking up, it might have been that resemblance which gave a turn to his thoughts and led him to say to his mother:
"Why did my father never get rich?"
"I hardly know, Peter. He used to say that he couldn't afford it. There were so many other things he wished to do; and I wished them, too. When we were young we did them together. Then your father was the sort of man who always gave too much and took too little. I remember his saying once that no one who loved his fellowman very much, could get rich."
"Do you wish he had?"
"I don't know that either. No, not if he was happier the way he was. And we were happy. Things would have come out all right if it hadn't been for the accident when the thresher broke, and his being ill so long afterward. And my people weren't so kind as they might have been. You see, they always thought him a little queer. Before we were married, before we were even engaged, he had had a little money. It had been left him, and instead of investing it as anybody in Bloombury would, he spent it in travel. I remember his saying that his memories of Italy were the best investment he could have made. But afterward, when he was in trouble, they threw it up to him. We had never got in debt before ... and then just as he was getting round, he took bronchitis and died."
She wiped her eyes quietly for a while, and the kettle on the stove began to sing soothingly, and presently Peter ventured: