shland train."

But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You go and
clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and everything in no time. You poor
boy. No breakfast!"

She made good her promise. It could not have been more than half an
hour later when he was buttering his third feathery, golden-brown
biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watched him, and listened,
and again her eyes were somber, but for a different reason. He broke
open his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch. Then he
remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again,
carefully. And at that she gave a tremulous cry, and rushed around the
table to him.

"Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent
and kissed the rough coat sleeve.

"Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!"

"Oh, Orville, listen----"

"Yes."

"Listen, Orville----"

"I'm listening, Terry."

"I've got something to tell you. There's something you've got to know."

"Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you'd out with it, pretty soon, if I
just waited."

She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared at him.
"But how could you know? You couldn't! How could you?"

He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. When you
have something on your mind you always take up a spoon of coffee, and
look at it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then
dribble it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used
to get me nervous, when we were first married, watching you. But now I
know it just means you're worried about something, and I wait, and
pretty soon----"

"Oh, Orville!" she cried then. "Oh, Orville!"

"Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to Daddy. And you'll
feel better."

Farmer in the Dell [1919]

Old Ben Westerveld was taking it easy. Every muscle taut, every nerve
tense, his keen eyes vainly straining to pierce the blackness of the
stuffy room--there lay Ben Westerveld in bed, taking it easy. And it
was hard. Hard. He wanted to get up. He wanted so intensely to get up
that the mere effort of lying there made him ache all over. His toes
were curled with the effort. His fingers were clenched with it. His
breath came short, and his thighs felt cramped. Nerves. But old Ben
Westerveld didn't know that. What should a retired and well-to-do
farmer of fifty-eight know of nerves, especially when he has moved to
the city and is tak