n, and God knows what kind of a living it
is. Your father has never given us more'n a three years' lease, and
every three years he's raised the rent on us. He's had us in his power
from the first--Oh, he's crafty, getting us to rent the land from him
instead of buying it, and Fay that soft that he believed him to be his
friend!--he's had us in his power from the first, and he's never spared
us. No wonder he's rich! And you're coming in for that Thorley money,
too. I know what your grandfather Thorley's will was. Going to get it
when you're thirty. Must be pretty nigh that now, ain't you?"

To humor her Thor named the date in the following February when he
should reach the age fixed by his grandfather for entering on the
inheritance.

"What'd I tell you? I remember your grandfather as plain as plain. Big,
hard-faced man he was, something like you. My folks could remember him
when he hawked garden-trucks to back doors in the city. Nothing but a
farmer's son he was, just like the rest of us--and he died rich. Only
difference between the Thorleys and the Fays was that the Thorleys held
on to their land and the Fays didn't. Neither did my folks, the
Grimeses. If we'd been crafty and hadn't sold till the city was creeping
down our chimneys like the Thorleys and the Brands, we should be as rich
as them. Cut your father out of his will good and hard, your grandfather
did, and now it'll all come to you. Why, there was a time when the
Thorleys hired out to my folks, and so did the Willoughbys! And now--!"
She threw the quilt from off her knees and spread her hands outward.
"Oh, I'm sick of it! I've spent my life watching every one else go up
and me and mine go down--and I'm sick of it. I'm not sick any other
way--"

"No, I don't think you are," he said, gently.

"But that's bad enough, isn't it? If I had a fever or a cold you could
give me something to take it away. But what can you do for the state of
mind I'm in?"

He answered, slowly, "I can't do much just yet--though I can do a
little--but by and by, perhaps--when I know more exactly what the
trouble is--"

"You can't know it better than I can tell you now. It's just this--that
I've all I can do to keep from stealing down to Thorley's Pond, when no
one's looking, and throwing myself in. What do you think of that?"

"I think you won't do it," he smiled, "but I wouldn't play with the idea
if I were you."

"Look here," she cried, seizing him by the arm and pulling him