Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/32

 dear friend. She loved every board in its weather-beaten sides, every shingle in its warped roof, every rusty nail that held it together.

The house where she and July would live at the other end of the Quarter street was exactly like it, for it was built at the same time, by the same people and by the same pattern. Its roof was warped too, its rotted shingles were edged with small green ferns, the wide-mouthed chimney rising out of its ridge-pole took up a third of the inside wall in the same way. It was an old unpainted wooden cabin sitting low on the earth, heavy with years, yet able and strong in its beam and joists and rafters and sides, for it was built in the old days when men took time to choose timbers carefully and to lay them together with skill. Like this old house, it had held many generations. Red birth, black death, hate, sorrow and love had all dwelt inside it, sheltered by its roof, shielded by its walls. July's people had lived in it for generations, but this was the home where she was born. Everything here was part of her life. She was born in this same bed. The crippled table over in the corner, heaped high with clean quilts, had been there ever since she could remember. The cupboard where her clothes stayed and the leaning shelf by the window with the four sad-irons