Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ Christopher laughed. “No, bless 'em,” said he, “the trees shall keep their sugar this season. This week is the first time I've had a chance to get acquainted with them and sort of enter into their feelings. Good Lord! I've seen how I can love those trees, Mr. Wheaton! See the pink on their young leaves! They know more than you and I. They know how to grow young every spring.”
Stephen did not tell Christopher how Ellen and Myrtle were to work the farm with his aid. The two women had bade him not. Christopher seemed to have no care whatever about it. ”

“ Now, I'm going to the store and buy what I want, and I'm going to fix it so Myrtle can draw the money when she wants it, and then I am going to the shack, and” — Christopher's voice took on a solemn tone — “I will tell you in just a few words the gist of what I am going for. I have never in my life had enough of the bread of life to keep my soul nourished. I have tried to do my duties, but I believe sometimes duties act on the soul like weeds on a flower. They crowd it out. I am going up on Silver Mountain to get once, on this earth, my fill of the bread of life.”
Stephen Wheaton gasped. ”

“ There was father and George's widow — she was never good for much at work — and mother and Abby. She was my youngest sister. As for me, I had a liking for books and wanted to get an education; might just as well have wanted to get a seat on a throne. I went to work in the grist-mill of the place where we used to live when I was only a boy. Then, before I was twenty, I saw that Sarah wasn't going to hold out. She had grieved a good deal, poor thing, and worked too hard, so we sold out and came here and bought my farm, with the mortgage hitching it, and I went to work for dear life. ”

“ Myrtle Dodd, Christopher's wife, washed the breakfast dishes, and later kneaded the bread, all the time glancing furtively at her husband. She had a most old-fashioned deference with regard to Christopher. She was always a little afraid of him. Sometimes Christopher's mother, Mrs. Cyrus Dodd, and his sister Abby, who had never married, reproached her for this attitude of mind. “You are entirely too much cowed down by Christopher,” Mrs. Dodd said.
“I would never be under the thumb of any man,” Abby said. ”

“ She thought that what her husband had said was odd, but he looked well, and he might have said it simply because he was a man.
Christopher put his arm around Myrtle. “I am better than I ever was in my whole life, Myrtle, and I've got more courage to work now than I had when I was young. I had to go away and get rested, but I've got rested for all my life. We shall get along all right as long as we live.”
“Ellen and the minister are going to get married come Christmas,” said Myrtle.
“She is lucky. He is a man that can see with the eyes of other people,” said Christopher. ”

“ I'm willing to admit that sometime, in another world, that why will get an answer, but meantime it's an awful thing to live in this world without it if a man has had the kind of life I have. My life has been harder for me than a harder life might be for another man who was different. ”

“ It was after the hay had been unloaded and Christopher had been shown the garden full of lusty vegetables, and told of the great crop with no drawback, that he and the minister had a few minutes alone together at the gate.
“I want to tell you, Mr. Wheaton, that I am settled in my mind now. I shall never complain again, no matter what happens. I have found that all the good things and all the bad things that come to a man who tries to do right are just to prove to him that he is on the right path. They are just the flowers and sunbeams, and the rocks and snakes, too, that mark the way. ”

“ To think all I have to do is to have the spring! See the light under those trees!”
Christopher spoke like a man in ecstasy. He tied the gray horse to a tree and brought a pail of water for him from the spring near by.
Then he said to Stephen: “Come right in. The bacon's done, and the coffee and the corn-cake and the eggs won't take a minute.”
The two men entered the shack. There was nothing there except the little cooking-stove, a few kitchen utensils hung on pegs on the walls, an old table with a few dishes, two chairs, and a lounge over which was spread an ancient buffalo-skin. ”

“ Stephen stayed all day on Silver Mountain. He and Christopher went fishing, and had fried trout for dinner. He took some of the trout home to Myrtle.
Myrtle received them with a sort of state which defied the imputation of sadness. “Did he seem comfortable?” she asked.
“Comfortable, Mrs. Dodd? I believe it will mean a new lease of life to your husband. He is an uncommon man.”
“Yes, Christopher is uncommon; he always was,” assented Myrtle.
“You have everything you want? You were not timid last night alone?” asked the minister. ”

“ She isn't one of the kind of women who want much besides decent treatment and a home. Myrtle is a good woman. I am sorry for her that she got married to me, for she deserved somebody who could make her a better husband. All the time, every waking minute, I've been growing more and more rebellious. ”

“ I can't drive, myself, and I don't like to hire anybody; aside from its being an expense, it would make talk. Mother Dodd and Abby won't make talk outside the family, but I suppose it will have to be known.”
“Mr. Dodd didn't want any mystery made over it,” Stephen Wheaton said.
“There ain't going to be any mystery. Christopher has got a right to live awhile on Silver Mountain if he wants to,” returned Myrtle with her odd, defiant air.
“But I will take the things up there to him, if you will let me have a horse and wagon,” said Stephen. ”

“ I have never had what men call luck. My folks were poor; father and mother were good, hard-working people, but they had nothing but trouble, sickness, and death, and losses by fire and flood. We lived near the river, and one spring our house went, and every stick we owned, and much as ever we all got out alive. ”

“ I knew I ought to have a little ahead in case Myrtle or I got sick, so I haven't tried to pay the mortgage, but put a few dollars at a time in the savings-bank, which will come in handy now.”
The minister regarded him uneasily. “What,” he asked, “do you mean to do?”
“I mean,” replied Christopher, “to stop trying to do what I am hindered in doing, and do just once in my life what I want to do. Myrtle asked me this morning if I wasn't going to plow the south field. Well, I ain't going to plow the south field. I ain't going to make a garden. I ain't going to try for hay in the ten-acre lot. ”

“ They bought the little house they live in and left the farm, for Abby was always hard to get along with, though she is a good woman. Mother, though she is a smart woman, is one of the sort who don't feel called upon to interfere much with men-folks. I guess she didn't interfere any too much for my good, or father's, either. Father was a set man. I guess if mother had been a little harsh with me I might not have asked that awful ‘why?’ I guess I might have taken my bitter pills and held my tongue, but I won't blame myself on poor mother.
“Myrtle and I get on well enough. ”

“ I heard queer noises,” said Myrtle, “but I sha'n't be alone any more. Christopher's niece wrote me she was coming to make a visit. She has been teaching school, and she lost her school. I rather guess Ellen is as uncommon for a girl as Christopher is for a man. ”