I ever heard of that Miss
Farrel, if she took such a notion to the child, enough to do so much
for her, didn't keep her herself."

"Miss Farrel was a queer woman," said Henry.

"I guess she wasn't any too well balanced," agreed Sylvia.

"What do you suppose tired Rose out so much this morning?" asked
Henry. "It isn't such a very long ride to Alford."

"I don't know. She looked like a ghost when she got home. I'm glad
she's laying down. I hope she'll get a little nap."

That was after dinner, when the house had been set in order, and
Sylvia was at one front window in the cool sitting-room, with a
basket of mending, and Henry at another with a library book. Henry
was very restless in these days. He pottered about the place and was
planning to get in a good hay crop, but this desultory sort of
employment did not take the place of his regular routine of toil. He
missed it horribly, almost as a man is said to miss a pain of long
standing. He knew that he was better off without it, that he ought to
be happier, but he knew that he was not.

For years he had said bitterly that he had no opportunity for reading
and improving his mind. Now he had opportunity, but it was too late.
He could not become as interested in a book as he had been during the
few moments he had been able to snatch from his old routine of toil.
Some days it seemed to Henry that he must go back to the shop, that
he could not live in this way. He had begun to lose all interest in
what he had anticipated with much pleasure--the raising of grass on
Abrahama White's celebrated land. He felt that he knew nothing about
such work, that agriculture was not for him. If only he could stand
again at his bench in the shop, and cut leather into regular shapes,
he felt that while his hands toiled involuntarily his mind could
work. Some days he fairly longed so for the old familiar odor of
tanned hides, that odor which he had once thought sickened him, that
he would go to the shop and stand by the open door, and inhale the
warm rush of leather-scented air with keen relish. But he never told
this to Sylvia.

Henry was not happy. At times it seemed to him that he really wished
that he and Sylvia had never met with this good-fortune. Once he
turned on Sidney Meeks with a fierce rejoinder, when Sidney had
repeated the sarcasm which he loved to roll beneath his tongue like a
honeyed morsel, that if he did not want his good-fortune it was the
easiest thing in the world t