Page:Cather--One of ours.djvu/81

Rh “Not necessary for you to see, Evangeline,” her husband replied, stretching his big frame until the rocking chair creaked under him. “It will be Claude’s business to look after that.”

“Claude?” Mrs. Wheeler brushed a lock of hair back from her damp forehead in vague alarm.

“Of course.” He looked with twinkling eyes at his son’s straight, silent figure in the corner. “You’ve had about enough theology, I presume? No ambition to be a preacher? This winter I mean to turn the farm over to you and give you a chance to straighten things out. You’ve been dissatisfied with the way the place is run for some time, haven’t you? Go ahead and put new blood into it. New ideas, if you want to; I’ve no objection. They’re expensive, but let it go. You can fire Dan if you want, and get what help you need.”

Claude felt as if a trap had been sprung on him. He shaded his eyes with his hand. “I don’t think I’m competent to run the place right,” he said unsteadily.

“Well, you don’t think I am either, Claude, so we’re up against it. It’s always been my notion that the land was made for man, just as it’s old Dawson’s that man was created to work the land. I don’t mind your siding with the Dawsons in this difference of opinion, if you can get their results.”

Mrs. Wheeler rose and slipped quickly from the room, feeling her way down the dark staircase to the kitchen. It was dusky and quiet there. Mahailey sat in a corner, hemming dish-towels by the light of a smoky old brass lamp which was her own cherished luminary. Mrs. Wheeler walked up and down the long room in soft, silent agitation, both hands pressed tightly to her breast, where there was a physical ache of sympathy for Claude.

She remembered kind Tom Wested. He had stayed