ow on that
there inter-est," she allowed. "You've been as kind and easy over it, I
reckon, Mr. Chase, as a body could be. Well, I reckon me and Joe we'll
have to leave the old place now."

"Lord knows, I don't see what there is to stay for!" said Chase feelingly,
sweeping his eyes around the wired-up, gone-to-the-devil-looking place.

"When a body's bore children in a place," she said earnestly, "and
nussed 'em, and seen 'em fade away and die; and when a body's lived in a
house for upward of forty years, and thought things in it, and
everything----"

"Bosh!" said Isom Chase, kicking the rotting step.

"I know it's all shacklety now," said she apologetically, "but it's home
to me and Joe!"

Her voice trembled over the words, and she wiped her eyes with the
corner of her head-shawl; but her face remained as immobile as features
cast in metal. When one has wept out of the heart for years, as Sarah
Newbolt had wept, the face is no longer a barometer over the tempests of
the soul.

Isom Chase was silent. He stood as if reflecting his coming words,
trying the loose boards of the siding with his blunt thumb.

"Peter and I, we came here from Kentucky," said she, looking at him with
a sidelong appeal, as if for permission to speak the profitless
sentiments of her heart, "and people was scarce in this part of Missouri
then. I rode all the way a-horseback, and I came here, to this very
house, a bride."

"I didn't take a mortgage on sentiment--I took it on the land," said
Chase, out of humor with this reminiscent history.

"You can't understand how I feel, Mr. Chase," said she, dropping her
arms at her sides hopelessly. "Peter--he planted them laylocks and them
roses."

"Better 'a' planted corn--and tended to it!" grunted Chase. "Well, you
can grub 'em all up and take 'em away with you, if you want 'em. They
don't pay interest--I suppose you've found that out."

"Not on money," said she, reaching out her hand toward a giant lilac
with a caressing, tender air.

"Sit down," said he in voice of command, planting himself upon the
porch, his back against a post, "and let's you and I have a little talk.
Where do you expect to go when you leave here; what plans have you got
for the future?"

"Lord, there's not a clap-board in this world that I can poke my head
under and lay claim to its shelter!" said she, sitting again in her low
rocker, shaking her head sadly.

"Your boy Joe, he'll not be able to command man's wages f