Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/117

Rh was full of knowing, and it didn't matter how hard she worked, how rough her hands got, nor how drawn and thin and worn-out she was with being sick, and having babies one after another, that died when they were born, she never lost that fine look about her eyes.

"My stepfather hated me," he continued. "He liked trapping and hunting and killing things in the woods, and I didn't. He hated anything to do with a farm, and mother and me used to have to tend the cow; and it was us too, who hoed the potatoes usually, or chopped the kindling. He was cross and glum by nature, but worse when he'd been drinking. It was when he'd been drinking that he used to whip me sometimes, when my mother wasn't around. He used a strap—a thin little cutting strap. It hurt. It used to make me holler. Fact was, he'd keep at it till I did holler. But I think the things my mother had to bear from that beast of a man, when he was drunk, were worse than my floggings. I can't think of it now, without getting mad all over again."

He stopped—for so long, in fact, that Reba had to remind him gently. He seemed to drag himself back to the narrative with an effort.

"I always wanted an education," he took up. "I didn't care about anything, when I was a kid, but things in books—seems though. My mother knew how I felt, and did all she could to help me. Lots of times she'd do the chores around the place herself, so's I could have the time to study. When I got through with the district school I began going to an academy twenty miles from our place. I used to walk across to the railroad four miles from our farm—if