daily grind of hard, toilsome childhood which came within his sight.

The bird flew away, and Jerome spaded again. He knew that he must
finish so much before dinner or his mother would scold. He was not
afraid of his mother's sharp tongue, but he avoided provoking it with
a curious politic and tolerant submission which he had learned from
his father. "Mother ain't well, you know, an' she's high-sperited,
and we've got to humor her all we can," Abel Edwards had said,
confidentially, many a time to his boy, who had listened sagely and
nodded.

Jerome obeyed his mother with the patient obedience of a superior who
yields because his opponent is weaker than he, and a struggle beneath
his dignity, not because he is actually coerced. Neither he nor his
father ever answered back or contradicted; when her shrill voice
waxed loudest and her vituperation seemed to fairly hiss in their
ears, they sometimes looked at each other and exchanged a solemn wink
of understanding and patience. Neither ever opened mouth in reply.

Jerome worked fast in his magnanimous concession to his mother's
will, and had accomplished considerable when his sister opened the
kitchen window, thrust out her dark head, and called in a voice
shrill as her mother's, but as yet wholly sweet, with no harsh notes
in it: "Jerome! Jerome! Dinner is ready."

Jerome whooped in reply, dropped his spade, and went leaping down the
hill. When he entered the kitchen his mother was sitting at the table
and Elmira was taking up the dinner. Elmira was a small, pretty girl,
with little, nervous hands and feet, and eager black eyes, like her
mother's. She stretched on tiptoe over the fire, and ladled out a