forget the dodge I told ye. And maybe Mrs. du
Plessis 'll be willing to give me coffee again when I come.
So good-day to ye, and mind--drain 'em!'

"When he was gone Kornel and I looked at each other and
laughed emptily. Then he went out to the mud again to make
ready for Thursday.

"So it was we lived for a time that was shorter than it
seemed, building on the mud of our shaky fortunes a pride
that our poverty could not overturn. Kornel had a saying
that seemed irreligious but very true. 'There are ministers
and farmers and lawyers who are rich,' he would observe,
'but there's no money in work,' I have since been won to
believe that there is a flaw in the argument, but for us it
was true, and bitterly true. We were never on the right
side of ten shillings; we were never out of sight of the
thin brink of want. That we were preserved and kept clear
of disaster was due only to the toil of Kornel and my own
anxious care for the spending of the money. I found out
that a wife who is strong has a great trade to drive in
upholding her house; and I, at any rate, was proficient in
maintaining cleanliness, in buying and making food, and
preserving to my home the atmosphere of happiness and
welcome that anchors a man to his own place. Take it all in
all, we were happy, and yet I would not pretend that there
were not grim hours when we wondered if the mere living
were worth all that it cost. Kornel, hard as iron always,
grew lean and stooped, and there appeared in his face a
kind of wild care that frightened me. From the chill
upcoming of the dawn to the rising of the wind at evening
he taxed himself remorselessly at the sorry work in the
mud, while I scrubbed and scraped and plotted and prayed to
make the meagre pay cover wants that were pared meagre
enough. Yes, there were certainly times when we thought the
cost too great, but, God be praised, we never thought it at
the same moment, and the stronger always upheld the weaker.

"And there was never any shame in the matter. Even as we
feared nothing, we were never ashamed. Never!

"One morning--, about an hour before high sun, when the dust
lay thick on the road into the town that passed our land,
and the neighborhood around was feverish with the fuss of
the Kafirs and yellow folk, I stood for a moment at my
door, looking down to where Kornel was fervently at work in
the spruit. There was always traffic on the road at that
hour, and something drew me to look towards it.