of a hill which
rose directly behind the house; when his spade struck a stone Jerome
would send it rolling out of his way to the foot of the hill. He got
considerable amusement from that, and presently the work warmed him.

The robins were singing all about. Every now and then one flew out of
the sweet spring distance, lit, and silently erected his red breast
among some plough ridges lower down. It was like a veritable
transition from sound to sight.

Below where Jerome spaded, and upon the left, stretched long waving
plough ridges where the corn was planted. Jerome's father had been at
work there with the old white horse that was drawing wood for him
to-day. Much of the garden had to be spaded instead of ploughed,
because this same old white horse was needed for other work.

As Jerome spaded, the smell of the fresh earth came up in his face.
Now and then a gust of cold wind, sweet with unseen blossoms, smote
him powerfully, bending his slender body before it like a sapling. A
bird flashed past him with a blue dazzle of wings, and Jerome stopped
and looked after it. It lit on the fence in front of the house, and
shone there in the sunlight like a blue precious stone. The boy gazed
at it, leaning on his spade. Jerome always looked hard out of all his
little open windows of life, and saw every precious thing outside his
daily grind of hard, toilsome childhood which came within his sight.

The bird flew away, and Jerome spaded again. He knew that he must
finish so much before dinner or his mother would scold. He was not
afraid of his mother's sharp tongue, but he avoided provoking it with
a curious politic and tolerant submission which he had learned from
his father. "Mother ain't well, you know, an' she's high-sperited,
and we've got to humor her all we can," Abel Edwards had said,
confidentially, many a time to his boy, who had listened sagely and
nodded.

Jerome obeyed his mother with the patient obedience of a superior who
yields because his opponent is weaker than he, and a struggle beneath
his dignity, not because he is actually coerced. Neither he nor his
father ever answered back or contradicted; when her shrill voice
waxed loudest and her vituperation seemed to fairly hiss in their
ears, they sometimes looked at each other and exchanged a solemn wink
of understanding and patience. Neither ever opened mouth in reply.

Jerome worked fast in his magnanimous concession to his mother's
will, and had accomplishe