Dorothy Canfield

“ Like their mother, they were large and comely, with a healthfully ready ability to be satisfied with life. It was hard to connect the well-groomed, trimly attired, prepossessing trio, riding and driving about the "residential portion" of the suburb, with the shabby, half-daft hired man in overalls who rarely left the truck-farm at the other end of town. In a surprisingly short time even those who knew of the unprecedented circumstances came almost involuntarily to regard Mrs. Warren as a highly ornamental widow, and the children as half-orphans. ”

“ And yet when the doctor, the well-known James Farquhar, M.D., who was the closest friend of the injured man and his wife, pronounced the acute danger past and said that he might be allowed to see his family for a moment, Matthew Warren looked dully at the handsome woman and the two blooming children who, showing a frightened tendency to tears, came to the private room at the hospital to stand by his bedside. "Who are those people?" he asked his nurse, with the weak curiosity of a sick man, losing interest as he spoke. ”

“ O'Donovan especially petted him and cherished him, and lavished on him the affection which she had been so ready to give the son Heaven had never granted her. As she and her husband grew older, and as this adopted member of their family began to seem more "like other people," read books, studied farming and trucking seriously, and recovered something of his shattered memory for every-day events, he was trusted with more and more of the farming and the business. ”

“ O'Donovan died he mourned her with sorrow so sincere that her bereaved old husband felt him to be the one link which still bound him to life, and seven years later, when old Timothy himself passed away in the arms of his faithful servitor, it was found that he had left the farm and house to the wanderer who, twelve years before, haggard and nameless, had stumbled desperately up his garden path.
The new farmer was not long to lead a solitary life. ”

“ After this device was in working order, O'Donovan boasted that no man could wish for better help than this stalwart, cheerful, deft-handed laborer, who loved every plant in the long rows of the truck-farm, worked, whistling and singing, all day long, and never asked for a holiday. For a long time his only excursions away from the farm were on Sundays, when he went with his employer and Mrs. O'Donovan to the little Roman Catholic church set in the midst of the poorer quarter of the suburb. ”

“ She had never thought, apparently, of seeking a divorce from her husband. Among her numerous friends this constancy was much admired.
These swept by the burly, elderly gardener without a look, quite sincerely unaware of his identity. They relied on the doctor to let them know if the now quite unlooked-for "change" should ever take place, and they all of them led absorbing lives of the greatest interest to themselves. ”

“ Warren's first distracted impulse had been to take the children and go away—abroad, perhaps. That had seemed to her the only endurable future. But she gave up this plan when the doctor showed a disappointed and sternly disapproving surprise that she "abandon" a man who might be in desperate need at almost any time. ”

“ As a matter of fact, her acquiescence to his opinion cost her far less than she feared. The miraculous capacity of life to renew itself under any and all circumstances came brilliantly to the rescue of a nature normal above everything else. ”

“ From the first they had all three followed to the letter the doctor's recommendation to keep away from the region of the truck-farm. They depended for news of the sick man upon the doctor himself, who took care to go past the O'Donovan place at not infrequent intervals to inquire particulars of the new "help."
There, too, as frequently happens with busy people absorbed in their own difficult affairs, O'Donovan and his wife adjusted themselves to the singular state of things with a rapidity which astonished them. ”

“ The doctor nodded and began to speak rapidly, violently. He had not gone far before the gardener stood up in evident agitation. He shook his head, frowning, and motioned the other to silence.
"I'm all right as I am," he said, curtly. "What is the good of prying into what's long past and nobody knows about, anyhow. Such things oughtn't to be stirred up—they only—" The doctor beginning to talk again, he raised 'his voice to cry angrily: "I don't want to hear any more such talk! 'Tis better to take things as they are. Nobody is the better for prying into secrets that—"
Dr. ”

“ Once, as the doctor fled desperately away from a cotillion, and came out shivering into the cold dawn, shrugging on his overcoat and frowning, he caught sight of the O'Donovan vegetable cart making its early start for the market. He stood still in front of the Warren house, the chilly morning air whipping streaks of red up into his pale reveler's face. The horses jogged by, Warren holding the reins loosely, his powerful body lounging on the seat, his coarse shirt open at the throat. Dr. ”

“ His daughter, after a very successful young-ladyhood competently managed by her mother, was married now to a prosperous, hard-working, commuting banker, considerably older than herself, and lived in a house a little more expensive and very much more in accord with the latest fashions in domestic architecture than her mother's, which was now, in the swiftly advancing American town, one of the "older residences." ”

“ His prostration after this second shock was so great that he could not be moved back to the hospital, and he spent the slow month of collapse and utter weakness which followed in his own bed in his own room under the care of two men nurses. His wife had insisted upon men, having a panic fear of a return of his violence. The doctor advised her to keep out of the sick-room, counsel which she seemed not eager to disregard. ”

“ It has been an especially hard case, because the mere mention of his lost identity throws him into a fever. Otherwise he has been quite reasonable. You must remember that it is absolutely essential to keep perfectly calm yourself. He is a very, very sick man."
Mrs. Warren glanced at her husband and shivered throughout all her big, handsome, healthy body. ”

“ They started tentatively some hot-beds for early vegetables which later grew by degrees to a greenhouse. The younger man, after several years of experimenting, developed a new variety of tomato, especially suited to their conditions. ”