Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/318

 head and listened, glancing toward the woodshed. The door was ajar.

'Phillip, is that you?'

'Yes,' a boy's voice replied, and Phillip appeared in the doorway, frail, pale, as he used to be—he would always be frail and pale—but smiling.

Phillip had a strangely sweet smile, Sheilah had come to think, deep and still and abiding, as if there was some secret source of joy in him no one knew about but himself. Only lessons that were too hard for him could contort Phillip's smile into the anguished expression of a hunted animal. Sheilah had decided to preserve Phillip's smile at whatever cost. He still attended school, but she chafed no longer at his slow progress, nor allowed his teachers to prod or urge him.

'School out so soon?' she smiled.

'Yes,' he replied, 'and I'm going over to the shop to help Father now.'

He had a board under one arm, and a saw. Phillip very often had a board under one arm, and some carpenter's tool or other. Sheilah looked at him now, standing in the glow of the late afternoon sunshine, his face alight with that deep smile of his, and was suddenly reminded of another boy, often pictured by artists, with a board under one arm and a carpenter's tool. Oh, the carpenter's craft was not one to be despised!