about her gray eyes, and
their color seemed heavy and faded. The boy sat staring at his mother
with an intensity that made a color come to her cheeks, but he was not
looking at her any more. Instead, he was wondering fiercely why he had
never noticed the gray in her hair or the lines in her face, or the
cough. The cough--surely he might have noticed that. His body lay limp
against the back of the chair.

"The doctor said that Ma was pretty sick," his father was speaking on,
his voice devoid of life or feeling. "But he said that she 'ud be all
right if she went some place where the air was drier."

"What did he say it was?" he asked in a strained voice.

"It's her lungs, he says."

They were silent after this. He was looking out of the window at a
far-away straw-stack which lay a mass of dull gold in the sombre setting
of plowed land.

His mother still stood behind his chair. In the heavy silence of the
room he could hear her uneven breathing. He heard his father turn in his
chair.

"Well, Mother's got to go west--we might all of us go," he spoke with an
attempt at cheerfulness. "Maybe we can work a small farm out there."

"What will we do with the farm here?" As she spoke the boy felt his
mother's hand press more heavily on his shoulder. He turned from the
window and caught his father's eyes looking at him. He saw his face
flush.

"I guess we got to sell it. I can get a fair price. Help is scarce and
rent's low since the dry years. We can't afford to rent it."

Again the boy caught his father's glance resting hopefully on him.

"But we can't sell the old place; we have worked it too long."

The boy was uneasily conscious of the break in his mother's voice. He
sat up, his body stiffened. Did they expect him to stay on the farm? He
wouldn't--he could not do that! They had no right to ask this of him.
But he remembered the quick hope in his father's eyes.

He got up from his chair, walked past his mother without looking at her,
picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly
behind him.

The earth slept warm in the drowsiness of early afternoon. The freshness
of the morning had passed and a languorous mist had fallen. The boy
looked out to where earth and sky met in a haze of indefinable color.
What a wonderful earth was beyond! He turned and walked heavily away.
They hadn't any right to expect that!

Half-unconsciously he went toward the grove north of the house where he
had play