d to her personal account.

One spring night Hester sat in a rocking chair by the sitting room
window, darning socks. She rocked violently and sent her long needle
vigorously back and forth over her gourd, and it took only a very
casual glance to see that she was wrought up over something. William
sat on the other side of the table reading his farm paper. If he had
noticed his wife's agitation, his calm, clean-shaven face betrayed
no sign of concern. He must have noticed the sarcastic turn of her
remarks at the supper table, and he must have noticed the moody
silence of the older boys as they ate. When supper was but half over
little Billy, the youngest, had suddenly pushed back his plate and
slipped away from the table, manfully trying to swallow a sob. But
William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic
horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

After supper the boys had gone to the pond under the willows in the
big cattle corral, to get rid of the dust of plowing. Hester could
hear an occasional splash and a laugh ringing clear through the
stillness of the night, as she sat by the open window. She sat
silent for almost an hour reviewing in her mind many plans of
attack. But she was too vigorous a woman to be much of a strategist,
and she usually came to her point with directness. At last she cut
her thread and suddenly put her darning down, saying emphatically:

"William, I don't think it would hurt you to let the boys go to that
circus in town to-morrow."

William continued to read his farm paper, but it was not Hester's
custom to wait for an answer. She usually divined his arguments and
assailed them one by one before he uttered them.

"You've been short of hands all summer, and you've worked the boys
hard, and a man ought use his own flesh and blood as well as he does
his hired hands. We're plenty able to afford it, and it's little
enough our boys ever spend. I don't see how you can expect 'em to be
steady and hard workin', unless you encourage 'em a little. I never
could see much harm in circuses, and our boys have never been to
one. Oh, I know Jim Howley's boys get drunk an' carry on when they
go, but our boys ain't that sort, an' you know it, William. The
animals are real instructive, an' our boys don't get to see much out
here on the prairie. It was different where we were raised, but the
boys have got no advantages here, an' if you don't take care,
they'll grow up to be gre