ence of the harmony between
them all had grown upon her of late, like an obsession. It seemed to her
that her face must wear the strained, propitiatory smile she had so
despised in her youth on the faces of older woman, mothers of families.
Now she knew from what it came . . . balancing perpetually on a tight-rope
from which . . .

Oh, her very soul felt crumpled with all this pressure from the outside,
never-ending!

The worst was not the always recurring physical demands, the dressing
and undressing the children, preparing their food and keeping them
clean. The crushing part was the moral strain; to carry their lives
always with you, incalculably different from each other and from your
own. And not only their present lives, but the insoluble question of how
their present lives were affecting their future. Never for a moment from
the time they are born, to be free from the thought, "Where are they?
What are they doing? Is that the best thing for them?" till every
individual thought of your own was shattered, till your intelligence was
atrophied, till your sensibilities to finer things were dulled and
blunted.

Paul came back. "About ready for Henry?" he asked. "I've finished the
porch."

She put the two tightly closed kettles inside the fireless cooker and
shut down the lid. "Yes, ready for Henry," she said.

She washed her hot, moist face in cold water, drank a glass, put on a
broad-brimmed garden hat, and set out for the field back of the barn.
The kitchen had been hot, but it seemed cool compared to the heat into
which they stepped from the door. It startled Marise so that she drew
back for an instant. It seemed to her like walking through molten metal.
"Mercy! what heat!" she murmured.

"Yes, ain't it great?" said Paul, looking off, down the field, "just
what the corn needs."

"You should say 'isn't,' not 'ain't,'" corrected his mother.

"But it'll be cooler soon," said Paul. "There's a big thunderstorm
coming up. See, around the corner of the mountain. See how black it is
now, over the Eagle Rocks" He took her hand in his bramble-scarred
little fingers, and led her along, talking proudly of his own virtue.
"I've moved Henry's pen today, fresh, so's to get him on new grass, and
I put it under the shade of this butternut tree."

They were beside the pen now, looking over the fence at the grotesque
animal, twitching his gross and horribly flexible snout, as he peered up
at them out of his small, intellige