at something behind ye. They'd give
anyone creeps. He never had any notion of flesh-and-blood women after
that--said a man wouldn't, after seeing Isabel. His life was plumb
ruined. Lucky he died young. I hated to be in the same room with
him--he wa'n't canny, that was all there was to it. _You_ keep away
from that grave--_you_ don't want to look odder than ye are by nature.
And when ye git married, ye'll have to give up roamin' about half the
night in graveyards. A wife wouldn't put up with it, as I've done."

"I'll never get as good a wife as you, Aunt Catherine," said Roger
with a little whimsical smile that gave him the look of an amused
gnome.

"Dessay you won't. But someone ye have to have. Why'n't ye try 'Liza
Adams. She _might_ have ye--she's gittin' on."

"'Liza ... Adams!"

"That's what I said. Ye needn't repeat it--'Liza ... Adams--'s if I'd
mentioned a hippopotamus. I git out of patience with ye. I b'lieve in
my heart ye think ye ought to git a wife that'd look like a picter."

"I do, Aunt Catherine. That's just the kind of wife I want--grace and
beauty and charm. Nothing less than that will ever content me."

* * * * *

Roger laughed bitterly again and went out. It was sunset. There was no
work to do that night except to milk the cows, and his little home boy
could do that. He felt a glad freedom. He put his hand in his pocket
to see if his beloved Wordsworth was there and then he took his way
across the fields, under a sky of purple and amber, walking quickly
despite his limp. He wanted to get to some solitary place where he
could forget Aunt Catherine and her abominable suggestions and escape
into the world of dreams where he habitually lived and where he found
the loveliness he had not found nor could hope to find in his real
world.

Roger's mother had died when he was three and his father when he was
eight. His little, old, bedridden grandmother had lived until he was
twelve. He had loved her passionately. She had not been pretty in his
remembrance--a tiny, shrunken, wrinkled thing--but she had beautiful
grey eyes that never grew old and a soft, gentle voice--the only
woman's voice he had ever heard with pleasure. He was very critical as
regards women's voices and very sensitive to them. Nothing hurt him
quite so much as an unlovely voice--not even unloveliness of face. Her
death had left him desolate. She was the only human being who had ever
understood him. He c