They heard a low, rather contemptuous laugh, and saw Ham standing in the
door. His coarse lumberman's socks were pulled up over his trousers'
legs and splashed with mud of the stable lot.

"Aunt Hannah, what gave you the notion that there's anything wrong about
complainin'?" he demanded shortly, and Mary knew that she had acquired a
champion.

"Complainin' against God's will is a sin. Every person knows that." Aunt
Hannah spoke with the aggrieved uncertainty of one unexpectedly called
upon to defend an axiom. "An' for a girl to fret about her looks is
worldly."

"Oh, I see," the boy nodded slowly, but his voice was insurgent. "I
guess you think Almighty God wants the creatures He made to sit around
and sing about there bein' work to do. I wonder you don't feel afraid to
eat buckwheat cakes that He doesn't send down to you by an angel with
His compliments. My idea is that He wants folks to do things for
themselves and not to sing about it. As for being discontented, that's
the one thing that drives the world around. I think God made discontent
just for that."

Aunt Hannah moistened her lips. For decades she had been the member of a
God-fearing, toiling family whose righteousness was the righteousness of
stagnation. Now she stood face to face with radical heresy.

"But," she argued with some dumb feeling that she was defending
Divinity, "the Scriptures teach contentment an' it's worldly to be
vain."