Clara was a good cook, although not as expert as her fond mother's

little substitutions and innocent manipulations during their

engagement had led Gerald to believe. But she loved to please him,

and when flushed and triumphant she put down some especially

tempting dish before him, and felt his arm about her, tears of

actual joy would stand in her bright eyes. They had some happy

days, some happy hours, in the first newness of being together.

Gerald's man, Thomas, was an early cause of annoyance to Clara.

She would not have objected to cooking for a farm "hand"; that was

a matter of course with all good farmers' wives. But Thomas was

more British, in all that makes the British objectionable, than

his master, and Thomas was quite decidedly addicted to drink. He

never thought of wiping a dish, or bringing Clara in a bucket of

water from the well. He ate what she set out upon the kitchen

table for him, three times a day, chatting pleasantly enough of

the farm, the horses, chickens, and vegetable garden, if Clara was

in an amiable mood, but if, busy at the sink, or clearing the

dining-room table, she was inwardly fuming with resentment at his

very existence, Thomas could be silent, too, and would presently

saunter away, stuffing his pipe, without even the common courtesy

of piling his dishes together for her washing. Thomas held long

conversations with his master as they idled about the place; Clara

would hear their laughter. The manservant slept in a small shed

detached from the main house, and there were times when he did not

appear in the morning. At such times Gerald with a pot of strong

coffee likewise disappeared into the cabin.

"Pore old rotter!" the husband would say generously. "He's a

decentish sort, don't you know? I meanter say, poor old Thomas did

me an awfully good turn once--and that!"

Clara inferred from various hints that Gerald had once been in the

English army, and had met Thomas, and befriended him, or been

befriended by him, at that period of his existence. But, greatly

to the little bride's disappointment, Gerald never spoke of his

old home or his connections there. Clara had to draw what comfort

she could from his intimation that all his relatives were

unbelievably eminent and distinguished, the least of them superior

in brain and achievement to any American who ever drew the breath

of life.

And presently she forgot Thomas, forgot the petty annoyance of

cooking and summer heat and dogs and physical discomfort, in the

overwhelming prayer that the coming child, about whose advent

Gerald, at first annoyed, had later been so generously good-

natured, might prove a boy. Gerald, living uncomplainingly in this

dreadful little country town, enduring Western conditions with

such dignity, and loving his little wife despite her undertaker

father, would be seriously disgusted, she knew, if she gave him a

daughter.




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