Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/41

 vague but effective way, to her generation. Her father, for all his obscurity, was to her notion more useful than Keble. Wherever Keble went he drove a fair bargain: took something and gave something in return. Wherever the little physician went he left healing, courage, cheerfulness, and in return took, from some source close to the heart of life, the energy and will to give more.

She dismounted to open the gate of the Dixon yard and led Sundown past a meagre field of wheat, past straggling beds of onions and potatoes, towards a small unpainted house which struck her as the neglected wife of the big, scrupulously cared-for barn. Two harnessed farm wagons were standing before it, and a dirty touring car. A group of men were lounging near the woodshed chewing tobacco with a Sunday manner, and some small boys, bare-legged, were playing a discreet, enforcedly subdued game of tag. Two saddled horses were hitched to the fence, to which she led Sundown.

One of the Dixon children had run indoors to announce her advent, and as she stepped into the kitchen she was met by a woman dressed in black cotton and motioned into the adjoining room,—a combination of parlor and bedroom,—where two or three other women were sewing together strips of white cheese-cloth. All eyes turned to her.

The walls were covered with newspaper, designed to prevent draughts. There was a rust-stained print of Queen Victoria and a fashion plate ten years