he might consent to engage. But
Winona was now studying doctrines that put all power in the heart's
desire. Out of the infinite your own would come to you if you held the
thought, and she serenely held the better thought for Wilbur, even in
the moment of mechanical triumphs that brimmed his own cup of desire.
She willed him to prefer choicer characters than the roughs he consorted
with, to aspire to genteel occupation that would not send him back at
the day's end grimed, reeking with low odours, and far too hungry.

His exigent appetite, indeed, alarmed her beyond measure, because he
cried out for meat, whereas Winona's new books said that meat eaters
could hope for little reward of the spirit. A few simple vegetables,
fruits, and nuts--these permitted the soul to expand, to attain harmony
with the infinite, until one came to choose only the best among ideals
and human associates. But she learned that she must in this case
compromise, for a boy demanding meat would get it in one place if not
another. If not at the guarded Penniman table, then at the low resort
next to Pegleg McCarron's of one T-bone Tommy, where they commonly
devoured the carcasses of murdered beasts and made no secret of it.

He even rebelled at fabrications, highly extolled in the gospel of clean
eating, which were meant to placate the baser minded by their
resemblances to meat--things like nut turkey and mock veal loaf and
leguminous chicken and synthetic beefsteak cooked in pure vegetable
oils. These he scorned the more bitterly for their false pretense,
demanding plain meat and a lot of it. The nations cited by Winona that
had thrived and grown strong on the produce of the fields left him
unimpressed. He merely said, goaded to harshness, that he was not going
to be a Chinese laundryman for any one.

Of what avail to read the lyrics of a great Hindu vegetarian poet to
this undeveloped being? Still Winona laboured unceasingly to bring light
to the dark place. Teaching a public school for eight years had
developed a substratum of granite determination in her character. She
would never quit. She was still to the outer eye the slight, brown
Winona of twenty--perky, birdlike, with the quick trimness of a winging
swallow, a little sharper featured perhaps, but superior in acuteness of
desire and persistence, and with some furtive, irresponsible girlishness
lurking timorously back in her bright glance.

She still secretly relished the jesting address of