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 unfinished, suddenly remembering that she was not there and never would be there again. He had always been in the habit of asking for her this way whenever he came in and did not see her at once.

As time went on and the March sunshine warmed the earth into life, Bill became more cheerful. Everything takes heart in the spring; and Bill too felt the warmth of the sunshine in his bones. Like his children, like Tom and Bob and the cows and the geese and the chickens and the grass under his feet, he lifted up his face to the light and breathed deep of the warm, sweet air. He stretched, yawned, shook from him the heaviness and lethargy of winter, and felt once more that it was good to be alive. On those rare, delicate days in March when the earth is full of a promise of spring, a promise more intoxicating than any fulfilment, he whistled and sang again as he trudged round and round the field in the long furrow getting the ground ready for the new corn crop. So the shadow of death passed from the Pippinger family.

All his thoughts now were of his children, all his planning was for them. They were in school, all five of them; but Craw and the twins would graduate this year. After that everything would be easier. Craw would be at home to help him on the farm and the twins would keep house. Then with Craw's help he would get the farm back into good shape again. The land was good; and if he could once get the washes filled up so that it could be plowed, he and Craw would raise as good a crop of tobacco on it as Uncle Ezra Pettit or old Hiram Stone or any of that lot that felt themselves so much better than other folks because they had the time and the money to keep their ground in shape to raise good tobacco. Yes, Bill would show them all right. In the cool, invigorating March air and heartening sunshine he felt himself filled with a boundless zest for work and achievement.

Things went better with the Pippinger family after the twins were through school. Little women already, with a natural zest for housekeeping, they polished the milk pans, cleaned the cupboards, churned the butter and washed and