She just sighed—didn't say anything.
"Cheer up mother, do! Father's almost well; we can get through this year somehow. Next year I can make enough to buy a cow, really."
But it wasn't more than a month from that time, I was sitting on the door stone at twilight—thinking of Jimmy, of course—and—there was Jimmy. I thought it was his ghost; but if it was it was a very warm-blooded one.
As to old Mr. Robert Grey, Sr., he persuaded little Grace Salters to marry him; a pretty, foolish, plump little thing; and if you'll believe it, she died within a year—she and her baby with her.
Well. If ever anybody was glad I was.
I don't mean glad she was dead, poor girl; but glad I didn't marry him, and did marry Jimmy.
WHAT VIRTUES ARE MADE OF
"Making a virtue of necessity" we say, somewhat scornfully; and never consider that all virtues are so made.
"The savage virtues" of endurance, patience, gratitude, hospitality, are easily seen to be precisely the main necessities of savages. Their daily hardships and occasional miseries were such that an extra store of endurance was needed, and this they artificially cultivated by the system of initiation by torture.
The Spartans used the same plan, training the young soldier to bear a doubly heavy spear, that the real one might be light to his hand.