"I'll give you all the fighting you want," said she, reaching for the strap . . . It had been a hot day, and the cows had knocked down the fence and got into the corn field, and mother had had to chase them out six times, and she was tired. None of these things reacted to my advantage.
Two years later Marjorie and Jean started going to school, and we were proud boys indeed as we led them up the aisle to the master's desk.
I have said that the religion of my parents was essentially selfish, but I should have added that they were better than their religion. My mother's kindness had been marked in many a neighbour's home. In those days, when large families were still considered proper, her two children were a comparatively small impediment; indeed, it was commonly said among the townspeople that the smallness of my father's family had made it possible for him to pay for and clear his farm. At any rate my mother was a person of leisure by comparison with neighbour women who were trying to clothe, clean, and discipline ten or twelve children apiece.
The Lanes were in the same happy circumstances as ourselves, and being also our nearest neighbours, a considerable friendship had sprung up between the two families. This developed as we children grew older and had mutual interests in studies and sports. Jack—he was Jack now—and Jean often came over to our house on a winter's evening, bringing their school books, and the four of us sat about our big kitchen table poring over our studies or throwing or intercepting furtive glances between Jack and Marjorie, and, I may confess, between Jean and Frank. Jean was fair, with large blue eyes and clear pink cheeks and lips that always made me think of roses. They seemed always as delicate and tremulous as a rose-leaf after rain.
At eight o'clock we would close our books, and mother would say, "Marjorie, you may bring up a basin of apples," or perhaps it would be a dozen ears of roasting corn, and we would sit about the fireplace, munching in great happiness. Then we would have a game of blind-man's buff, in which I had a way of catching Jean, or button, button, who's got the button? or hide-the-handkerchief. And at nine Jack and Jean would leave for home, and we would go with them to their gate, and I would help Jean where the drifts were deep. And Marjorie and I would walk back arm in arm, and she would talk an unnecessary lot about Jack.
Jean's first poem was written about this time. She developed it one night while ostensibly busy at her studies, and slipped it into my hand when we parted in front of her house. I hurried home, but my mother and Marjorie sat so close to the lamp that I had no opportunity to read it until I went upstairs to bed. Then I smoothed the crumpled little sheet and read—
"When I am old And very tall I hope my name Will be Mrs. Hall."
I lay awake for hours that night, joyously piecing together bits of rhyme, but I was no versifier, and had to be content with prose. I put it in very matter-of-fact form on my slate, which I managed next day to leave on Jean's desk:
"Your proposal is accepted.—F.H."
When I was twelve Granny Lane died, and after that Mr. and Mrs. Lane often came over, too. As we worked at our lessons we would hear the restless clicking of our mothers' knitting-needles, while our fathers fought over their checker-board in a silence broken only by an outburst of triumph upon some clever strategy, or of chagrin when some deep-laid scheme had gone agley. Or sometimes the men would lay aside the board, and, turning their chairs toward the fire, with their pipes well lit and glowing in the bowl, would begin to recount tales of their youth when they were part of the locust-army of axe-men that had swept through the land and in some strange way had left standing the great tree at the end of our farm. Then lessons were forgotten, and we children drew silently close to the fire, as, big-eyed and flushed with adventure, we entered the enchanted halls of Romance. Sometimes it was a tale of the bear that my father met on a lonely road at night, or of the spring-gun which Mr. Lane had set and which had killed a neighbour's pig, for which offence he had been up before the magistrate; or of wolverines howling along dismal lake-shores in the moonlight, or the soft pit-pat of a panther's footfall close to the trail, but always along side, or of the tracks of a giant windigo which broke up the lumber camp at Carse's Ferry. And after such a night I would crawl to bed, trembling at every creak of the loose boards of my attic floor, and pull the clothes over my head so that even the moon might not seek me out.