look would disappear from his face. He was a handsome boy, with a
fearless outlook of black eyes from his lean, delicate face, and a
thick curling crop of fair hair which the sun had bleached like
straw. Always protected from the weather, Jerome's hair would have
been brown; but his hats failed him like his shoes, and often in the
summer season were crownless. However, his mother mended them as long
as she was able. She was a thrifty woman, although she was a
semi-invalid, and sat all day long in a high-backed rocking-chair.
She was not young either; she had been old when she married and her
children were born, but there was a strange element of toughness in
her--a fibre either of body or spirit that kept her in being, like
the fibre of an old tree.

Before Jerome entered the house his mother's voice saluted him.
"Where have you been, Jerome Edwards?" she demanded. Her voice was
querulous, but strongly shrill. It could penetrate every wall and
door. Ann Edwards, as she sat in her rocking-chair, lifted up her
voice, and it sounded all over her house like a trumpet, and all her
household marched to it.

"Been over in the pasture," answered Jerome, with quick and yet
rather defiant obedience, as he opened the door.

His mother's face, curiously triangular in outline, like a cat's,
with great hollow black eyes between thin parted curtains of black
false hair, confronted him when he entered the room. She always sat
face to the door and window, and not a soul who passed or entered
escaped her for a minute. "What have you been doing in the pasture?"
said she.