limitations, Mrs. Wagoner
was. Some women will not admit others are pretty, no matter what the
difference in their ages: they feel as if they were making admissions
against themselves.

Once when Jim was a boy Mrs. Wagoner had the good taste to refer in his
presence to his "homeliness," a term with which she sugar-coated her
insult. Jim grinned and shuffled his feet, and then said, "Kitty's
pretty." It was true: Kitty was pretty: she had eyes and hair. You could
not look at her without seeing them--big brown eyes, and brown tumbled
hair. Kitty was fifteen--two years younger than Jim in 187-.

Jim never went to school. They were too poor. All he knew his mother
taught him and he got out of the few old books in the book-case left by
the war,--odd volumes of the Waverley novels, and the _Spectator_, "Don
Quixote," and a few others, stained and battered. He could not have gone
to school if there had been a school to go to: he had to work: work,
as Mrs. Wagoner had truthfully said, "like a common nigger." He did not
mind it; a bird born in a cage cannot mind it much. The pitiful part is,
it does not know anything else. Jim did not know anything else. He did
not mind anything much--except chills. He even got used to them; would
just lie down and shake for an hour and then go to ploughing again as
soon as the ague was over, with the fever on him. He had to plough; for
corn was necessary. He had this compensation: he was worshipped by two
people--his mother and Kitty. If other people thought him ugly, they
thought him beautiful. If others thought him dull, they thought him
wonderfully clever; if others thought him ignorant, they knew how wise
he was.

Mrs. Upton's eyes were bad; but she saw enough to see Jim: the light
came into the house with him; Kitty sat and gazed at him with speechless
admiration; hung on his words, which were few; watched for his smile,
which was rare. He repaid it to her by being--Jim. He slaved for her;
waited for her (when a boy waits for his little sister it is something);
played with her when he had time.

They always went to church--old St. Ann's--whenever there was service.
There was service there since the war only every first and third
Sunday and every other fifth Sunday. The Uptons and the Duvals had been
vestrymen from the time they had brought the bricks over from
England, generations ago. They had sat, one family in one of the front
semicircular pews on one side the chancel, the other fa