eduction of salary."

To have lost his humble position would have frustrated his dream, for he
was doing his best to build for himself and for Her a home where they
could fulfil their destinies. He cherished no hope, hardly even a
desire, to be a great or rich man himself. He was one of the
nest-weavers, the cave-burrowers, the home-makers, who prepare the way
for the greater than themselves who shall spring from themselves.

He was of those who become the unknown fathers of great men. And so, on
a salary that would have meant penury to a man of self-seeking tastes,
he managed to save always the major part of his earning. At the bank he
was a modest but regular visitor to the receiving-teller, and almost a
total stranger to the paying-teller.

His wildest dissipation being a second pipeful of tobacco before he went
to bed--or "retired," as he would more gently have said it--he
eventually heaped up enough money and courage to ask Martha Kellogg to
marry him. Martha, who was the plainest woman in plain Hillsdale,
accepted William, and they were made one by the parson. The wedding was
accounted "plain" even in Hillsdale.

The groomy bridegroom and the unbridy bride spent together all the time
that Rudd could spare from the store. He bought for her a little frame
house with a porch about as big as an upper berth, a patch of grass with
a path through it to the back door, some hollyhocks of startling color,
and a highly unimportant woodshed. It spelled HOME to them, and they
were as happy as people usually are. He did all he could to please her.
At her desire he even gave up his pipe without missing it--much.

Mrs. Martha Rudd was an ambitious woman, or at least restless and
discontented. Having escaped her supreme horror, that of being an old
maid, she began to grow ambitious for her husband. She nagged him for a
while about his plodding ways, the things that satisfied him, the salary
he endured. But it did no good. Will Rudd was never meant to put boots
and spurs on his own feet and splash around in gore. He was for carpet
slippers, round-toed shoes, and on wet days, rubbers; on slushy days he
even descended to what he called "ar'tics."

Not understanding the true majesty of her husband's long-distance
dreams, and baffled by his unresponse to her ambitions for him, Martha
grew ambitious for the child that was coming. She grew frantically,
fantastically ambitious. Here was something William Rudd could respond
to. He co