The ambitious energetic little woman, who had taken the son of the indolent
farm hand to her heart, constantly talked to him of her own people. Every
afternoon when her housework was done she took the boy into the front room
of the house and spent hours laboring with him over his lessons. She worked
upon the problem of rooting the stupidity and dullness out of his mind
as her father had worked at the problem of rooting the stumps out of the
Michigan land. After the lesson for the day had been gone over and over
until Hugh was in a stupor of mental weariness, she put the books aside and
talked to him. With glowing fervor she made for him a picture of her own
youth and the people and places where she had lived. In the picture she
represented the New Englanders of the Michigan farming community as a
strong god-like race, always honest, always frugal, and always pushing
ahead. His own people she utterly condemned. She pitied him for the
blood in his veins. The boy had then and all his life certain physical
difficulties she could never understand. The blood did not flow freely
through his long body. His feet and hands were always cold and there was
for him an almost sensual satisfaction to be had from just lying perfectly
still in the station yard and letting the hot sun beat down on him.

Sarah Shepard looked upon what she called Hugh's laziness as a thing of
the spirit. "You have got to get over it," she declared. "Look at your own
people--poor white trash--how lazy and shiftless they are. You can't be
like them. It's a sin to be so dreamy and worthless."

Swept along by the energetic spirit of the woman, Hugh fought to overcome
his inclination to give himself up to vaporous dreams. He became convinced
that his own people were really of inferior stock, that they were to be
kept away from and not to be taken into account. During the first year
after he came to live with the Shepards, he sometimes gave way to a desire