certainty regarding his
comprehension of the subject, and with a gentle patience with his mood.
Nathan was often impatient of late.

"Yes, I know--only it seems as if----"

"Well, now what's lacking?" her husband asked when she again broke off the
sentence doubtfully. "He's got a good farm, an' he needs a wife to help
him run it. From what he says, his mother's too old t' be of any help. He
can't run it alone, an' seems t' me it's a good thing for both of 'em."

"That's just it!" Susan Hornby broke out, turning back, her eyes following
the progress of the pair toward the crimson west, her thoughts running
ahead to the unknown future where the progress of the soul would be helped
or hindered; "that's just it! He has a farm; now he's going to need a wife
to help run it--just as he needs a horse. If he'd only be fair about it,
but he's misleading her. She thinks he'll always do things the way he's
doing them now, and he won't; there'll be an end to that kind of thing
some day--and--and when they're married and he's got her fast, that kind
of man won't be nice about it--and--they'll live on the farm--and life's
so hard sometimes! Oh! I can't bear to see her broken to it!" she cried
with such intensity that the man at her side caught his breath with a sort
of sob.

"Anybody'd think to hear you talk, Susan, that marryin' was a thing to be
feared, an' that I'd been mean t' you."

What had she done? There was a half-frightened pause as Susan Hornby
struggled to bring herself back to the husband standing beside her who was
broken by failure.

"Bless your old soul, Nate," she answered quickly, and with the flush of
confusion on her face strangely like the flush of guilt, "if he's only
half as good to her as you've been to me, She'll never have anything to
complain of nor need anybody's sympathy."

Susan understood that her assurance did not wholly reassure that bleeding
heart, and to turn Nathan's thoughts to other things she slipped one hand
through his arm, and picking up the milk pails from the bench at her side
with the other, said with a little laugh:

"There now! I'll do your milking for that. You throw down the hay while I
do it. There's nothing the matter with you and me, except that I've done a
washing to-day and you don't sleep well of late. I haven't one thing in
all this world to complain of, and this would be the happiest year of my
life if you weren't a bit gloomy and under the weather. Come on--I'm
nervous