Читать книгу The Yoke of Life - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 3

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THE HOUSE

In front of a white and diminutive but well-built cottage in the "bush" a small boy sat on the bare back of an enormous plow-horse. His span, from knee to knee, was just sufficient to straddle the beast. He was thin-faced and thin-limbed, bareheaded and barefooted; his light, uncombed hair, sticking up stiffly and irregularly in all directions, was bleached by the sun in a strange gradation of almost contrasting colours, from a dull ash-blond to a sheeny white; his legs were tanned to a greyish brown, a colour which testified to a hardening process brought about by exposure not only to light and heat, but to wind, rain, and cold as well. In one hand he held the halter-line with which he had been guiding his horse. From his mere size one would have judged his age to be ten or eleven; but the expression of his face betrayed him to be at least three or four years older than that.

From out of the porch of the little cottage—a screened porch, hung with striped awnings which moved lazily in the evening breeze—a strangely melodious and cultivated voice issued forth. It seemed strange, of course, only by reason of the contrast in which it as well as the cottage stood to the surrounding wilderness in which the charred stumps of burnt trees were the most prominent feature.

"Well," that voice said, "if there is any one within thirty miles whose word I should take on a matter of this kind, Len, it is you. Yet I can only say that I must see with my own eyes before I believe. Should you recognise the bird if you saw a good picture?"

"I think so," replied the boy with a lisp.

"Come in for a moment. It won't take more than a minute. Those cows of yours went south. I saw them. Towards the old Lund place, along the dam. You'll catch them."

At the first word of invitation, the boy had slipped off the back of the horse as a grown person might slip off a hay-stack. He tied the beast to the stump of a tree and entered the porch.

There, a figure of medium height had risen. The boy confronted the owner of the voice, a bearded man considerably over middle age, clad in loose-fitting, somewhat shabby clothes. Within easy reach of a deck chair books were lying about on the floor and, balanced, on the narrow ledge of the balustrade which surrounded the porch. As the man moved, he did so with a pronounced limp: he had a club-foot. This was Mr. John Adam Crawford, principal of Balfour High School and a noted ornithologist who had built himself a modest summer home in this wilderness.

The door in the rear of the little porch led into a diminutive kitchen whence Mr. Crawford turned to the left into a room no larger than the porch the walls of which were covered from floor to ceiling with home-made book-shelves. A large, flat-topped desk occupied its centre; and an oaken arm-chair and a wicker lounge completed its furniture. Beyond, facing the front of the cottage, there was a small bed-room with its door standing open.

Mr. Crawford reached up to one of the shelves for a book. Turning its pages, he held it at the level of the boy's eyes and pointed to the picture of an American magpie.

"Yes," the boy said with conviction. "That's it."

"Very well," Mr. Crawford said, dubiously. "I have never seen the bird within sixty miles of this longitude. I should get a horse, I suppose. The trouble is, my holidays will be over in a week."

"You'll go away again?"

"Yes."

"I wish you could be our teacher."

"So do I, Len. So do I. It can't be done."

"The school where you teach is much larger, isn't it?"

"It's a high school," Mr. Crawford said with a sigh. "But perhaps in a few years. . . ."

"You wouldn't care to teach in a country school, would you?"

"It isn't that, Len. On the contrary, I should like it better than what I am doing. I think the work more important, too. You don't understand. It's a question of salary. You see, I have children, too."

"Have you?" the boy asked shyly.

"Yes, two boys. They are nearly grown-up. They are at college. When they finish there, I might be able to do what I should like to do; and that is to teach boys like yourself."

"Our school is going to be nice, I think. The carpenter says it will be finished by the first of October."

"Will it? And have you a teacher yet?"

"I don't know. The Department is going to send one out, they say. Whatever that may mean."

"Well, you want to get busy, Len. How old are you now?"

"I'm fourteen."

"You will have to work hard to catch up. You are seven or eight years behind."

"Yes," Len said dreamily. "I'll work hard all right. . . ."

"But?" the man encouraged kindly.

"I don't know whether I'll get much of a chance."

There was a moment's pause. The man looked down on the boy with an expression of infinite sympathy. He knew the conditions in pioneer settlements of the bush where the labour of women and children was not only an asset but an indispensable necessity; for, while the father created future wealth by clearing the land, the rest of the family had to make the living by selling butter and eggs, produced under circumstances which made mere trifles into hard tasks demanding patience and endurance worthy of better rewards.

The boy had drawn one of his feet up and was rubbing, with it, the mosquito and fly-punctured calf of the other leg. One of his hands was resting on the corner of the desk. His body was going through curious, almost writhing contortions. It seemed he had a question to ask.

Mr. Crawford, wishing to help him, half divined what was in his mind. "You would like to learn a great deal, would you not, Len?"

"Yes," the boy said, looking up into the man's face, with a side-way motion of his own thin but well-shaped head. "Would a teacher in our school take up more advanced work at all?"

"That would depend on who the teacher is."

"Would you?"

"Yes, if I saw any need for it."

"I'm afraid," the boy went on, "I shall have to stay at home next year. I've heard my stepfather say the law doesn't require him to send me."

"I see," Mr. Crawford nodded. "What should you like to do with yourself when you grow up, Len?"

"I don't know," the boy replied, much embarrassed. "I think I should like to be a teacher myself."

"Well," Mr. Crawford said slowly, "you'd have a long tedious task ahead."

"I suppose. . . . You have two sons at college, you said?"

"Yes."

"What do they learn at college?"

Mr. Crawford gave a short laugh. "Not much," he said. "They might learn many things. All that the great men of the past have thought and written."

"About the world and other countries; and about God?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to do that. What is a great man?"

"One who has thought and known more and more deeply than others."

"So that he can make inventions?"

"That, too. Though the greatest hardly do that."

"What do they do?"

"They explore the human heart and mind and help other men to understand themselves."

The boy sighed. Suddenly his dreamy expression dropped from him. "Well," he said, "I must go. Father went to McDougall; I must get the cows in before he gets home. Otherwise there will be a scolding."

"I hope," Mr. Crawford said, "there would not be anything worse."

The boy laughed in an embarrassed way, stopping at the door. "There might," he said.

"Well," Mr. Crawford said comfortingly, "we'll hope for the best. Good-by, Len. And if I should not see you again before I leave, good luck in school."

"Thanks," the boy said, and slipped out with remarkable speed.

Outside, he led his big horse alongside the charred stump to which he had tied it, found a foothold on top, and scrambled on to the animal's back.

A minute later he was crossing a huge ditch running from north to south and bridged by a culvert. Beyond it, he turned on to a dam thrown up on the bank of the ditch which angled to the south-east; in spite of its narrow, round top, rough with rain-washed gullies, it showed by the ruts cut into its marly clay that it was used as a road.

The sun had meanwhile sunk towards the west, beyond a gravelly ridge with a low, grassy slough behind it and, at the horizon, the dense, dark forest of poplars.

To the east of the dam, a dismal, alkaline swamp stretched low, green in places, with sedges, dock, and flags; the rest of its sunk expanse showing dark-brown muck with whitish incrustations.

Farther south, the dam angled across this swampy slough which turned to the south-west, widening out where the gravel ridge ran its headland into it like the spur of a cape. Thence, southward, the dam skirted the bush that swept east to the very shores of the Lake which, to the boy, was as distant and wonderful as fairyland.

At this point he crossed the ditch once more, by a culvert; for from now on the dam lay on its western bank.

To beguile the time, as his slow-trotting horse went south, the undersized boy began to move about on the vast back of his mount, striking attitudes which, to a spectator, would have looked silly.

At the same time, however, he kept a sharp look-out for the cows which he was supposed to find.

Twelve miles or so farther on there was a creek, Grassy Creek by name, to which cattle liked to migrate; for it was the only spot within reach of a day's tramp where they could immerse themselves in water without getting caught in sucking mud underneath; everywhere else open water was underlain by swamp. So long as there had been no frost to kill the mosquitoes, cattle were always craving for water to cool their feverish skins.

"I hope not," the boy said audibly. "I hope not!"—Meaning he hoped they had not gone as far as that.

But for mile after mile he went on and saw no sign of them. The sun had touched the horizon and was dipping behind it.

At last Len saw a huge spruce tree ahead, outtopping the poplars all around. It stood close to the road, guarding like a sentinel a homestead in the margin of the forest where once a family of Swedes had tried to wrest a home from the bush. Mr. Lund, half lame and half blind, had one day, many years ago, gone into bush or swamp and never been seen again. The rest of the family had moved away. Now, a Ukrainian settler lived there, doing well because he profited from the labour the Lunds had wasted on the place.

The landscape which, a few minutes ago, had still been a sombre green began to be redrawn by the rising dusk in grey and black. Len hurried his mount on: in him was the dread of the dark which is common to all such children as people the landscape with the creations of their brain.

When he reached the clearing of the yard, however, just beyond the great spruce tree, he pulled his horse in. His heart was in his throat: the scene looked so bewitched in its utter stillness. Over the whole of the open space which lay like a niche in the woods, and reaching out into the swampy slough to his right, there was spread, like a ceiling, a thin layer of smoke, snow-white, but quite opaque and marvellously level. It arose from a smudge in the cow-lot over which a straight pillar of smoke stood in the air, motionless like a pillar of stone; it was only two or three inches in diameter and reached up to a height of twenty or thirty feet above the ground, eight or ten above the dam, and from that point spread out in a level sheet which floated like a lid over all the landscape.

The boy on the horse was sorely tempted to turn back and to flee. This was a witch's habitation in an enchanted forest!

Yet he hesitated. What would happen if he did not bring the cows? He had always brought them.

That moment, from the cow-lot in the clearing, a man's voice sounded up. "That you, Len?"

"Yes." The boy's voice sounded hoarse.

"Looking for your cows? They came along all right. I turned them back an hour ago. They're over west, behind the ridge."

"Thanks," said the boy, reassured. "I better hurry."

This short colloquy with a voice which he recognised—he had not seen Mr. Philiptyuk though he had searched the cow-lot with his eyes—had restored his confidence in the sanity of things; it had even imparted a certain exuberance of spirits to him, so that he turned his horse and galloped away, whistling merrily to keep himself company.

When he had gone three or four miles, still staying on the dam, he came once more to the point where it first changed to the other side of the ditch and then angled into the slough which turned east, thence to sweep north and finally west again till it lost itself in the bush north-west of his home.

It was opposite this point that the huge gravel ridge on which Mr. Crawford's cottage was built ran out into the slough.

Len left the dam and turned west. He could still just make out his directions. The greys of the landscape had deepened; but they had not yet merged completely with the blacks. He looked over his shoulder. Yes, the first stars had sprung from out of the depth of the sky. There was nothing to worry about.

He rounded the spur of the ridge. He could not trot his horse here; for all about, like charred monuments, burnt stumps were sticking up, bristly, from the ground; and between them there was a dense entanglement of raspberry canes, dogwood, and young aspen saplings.

He reached the far side of the ridge before it was too late for him to see the stumps. Then he left the picking of the path entirely to his horse.

It was, however, so uncannily still that slowly the noises made by the horse began to take on an almost supernatural quality which once more made him hold his breath.

Then, suddenly, he saw a point of light ahead. It proceeded from a lamp burning in Mr. Crawford's cottage. It showed the direction.

He had hardly become reassured by its recognition when a new terror assailed him, making his heart miss a beat. Then it, too, was recognised for what it was; and, once recognised, it proclaimed that his worries were over. The terror arose from the fact that not many rods in front of him a cow lowed, suddenly, angrily, persistently; the sound contained a warning and a threat. That lowing he knew. It proceeded from Bessie, the lead cow, summoning her reluctant herd to follow her home.

"Hi-yah!" the boy sang out, swinging both arms, forgetful of the fact that the darkness made his gesture futile.

He stopped his horse; all about, great, lumbering beasts struggled to their feet, lifting their rumps from their recumbent positions. Slowly the whole herd gathered to a knot in front and began to move. Bessie ceased lowing; and the horse fell in line behind.

Like a caravan travelling through the night they proceeded north. Within half an hour the waning moon rose in the east, grinning over the landscape from the rim of the world. By her wan light Len recognised the east-west road which led past the newly built cottage. Only a little over two miles now!

He edged over to the north in order to get the cows to follow the road and to prevent them from entering the bush beyond. When he passed the cottage, he saw a man's figure silhouetted against the light which fell from the open door of the kitchen into the half luminous tent of the porch.

"Hello!" Len sang out cheerfully.

"You found them, did you?" Mr. Crawford's voice came back. By contrast to the haunted night it sounded wonderfully friendly.

"Yes," he said. "No trouble at all. Mr. Philiptyuk had turned them for me."

"Fine. Well, good-night."

"Good-night."

A little further on, Len executed another manœuvre to make sure that the herd would turn north and file into the slough. Once there, they would follow the dry trail which skirted it, winding in and out over the burnt-over bush of the ridge and finally cutting through it to the north-west till it reached the road which led past the farm.

Every now and then one of the cows stopped and lowed for water, lifting its nose. Water they would find at home now, and they knew it; yet they were slow; and Len was hungry.

But their very stops in order to low brought an unexpected ally. The ground seemed suddenly to break into life with the barking of a dog. Rover had heard them; and though he never left the yard for very long, he had come to meet his young master.

His barks were answered by the howls of a pack of wolves in the bush to the west. Len listened and recognised them as coyotes, not timber-wolves; no danger from them! The dog, racing about, drove the herd into a trot. Len did not like that; for he knew that the swinging udders of the running beasts would spill milk right and left; and if he happened to meet his stepfather on the grade, there would be sharp words. But what could he do? Let them run if they must!

A few minutes later his horse gripped the flank of the grade and bounded up. To the right, as he turned east, the light of the house shone cosily out into the night. This was a self-contained world, closed off from the rest of the universe.

In the now white lustre of the moon, the boy loomed high on his plow-horse as, in twos and threes, the cows filed across the pole culvert and into the open gate of the yard beyond the ditch. A moment later he followed them, slipped to the ground, and closed the gate.

A short run-way, fenced on both sides, led past the house to the back yard with the cow-lot in its north-east corner. Crazed with thirst, the herd enacted the nightly scene of pushing and shouldering each other around the trough in the centre of the yard.

The backdoor of the house had opened; and a boy smaller than Len had shot forth, running fast on bare feet to reach the pump first; and there he was ineffectually working away, for his weight was insufficient to swing the handle of the pump through a large enough angle.

Behind him, in the luminous rectangle of the door, appeared the form of a fat woman of medium height, wiping her face with the corner of her apron. "Where were they, Len?" she asked.

"South of Mr. Crawford's, west of the ridge; but I didn't know. I went as far as Philiptyuk's, along the dam."

"Ya-ya-ya-yah!" the woman sighed, shaking her head. "Well, drink the cows; and then come in for supper."

The cows drank for half an hour; one by one they filed off into the lot; and when the last had gone, Len closed them up.

The boys ran a race to the house which Len magnanimously allowed his smaller brother to win.

The backdoor led into the kitchen which occupied an almost central position in the house. To the east, a stairway led up; to the west, a large living room opened from the far corner. The inside of the frame building remained unfinished; no lath and plaster, not even an inner boarding had ever been applied to the joists. A summer day's heat still lingered in the rooms, and the smell of sun-parched wood mingled with the odour of cooking.

In a high chair, near the hot stove on which steamed a pan of dish water, sat a baby.

"Father at home yet?" Len asked of Charlie in a whisper.

"No," Charlie answered; and, "tagging" his brother, he ran into the living room where he jumped up on an extension couch the springs of which creaked under his feet.

Mrs. Kolm, the mother, had filled a plate with soggy potatoes over which she poured melted lard, brown with long frying. She made the impression of being dispirited to an uncommon degree.

Len sat down on an upended box, took the plate from her hand, reached for a spoon, and began to eat ravenously.

But he had not taken many bites before the rumbling of a wagon crossing the culvert sounded through the house. Len put his plate down on the table and rose.

"Eat your supper first," his mother said sharply, busying herself at the stove where she broke three eggs into the sizzling lard.

Len resumed his plate with a dubious look. Charlie dived from the living room into the stairway where he sat down on one of the steps.

A minute or so went by before the wagon stopped in the yard. A strong voice called impatiently, "Whoa, there!"

It was so still that the thud of the driver's feet could be heard as he jumped to the ground. Steps crossing the yard resounded as if going over a wooden floor.

The door flew open; and there entered a man who had to stoop in order to remain clear of the lintel. His shadow which, as the door closed, rose behind him against the wall made him appear still taller than he was. The breadth of his shoulders was enormous; and above them stood a head in which the sockets of the eyes, in the light of the lamp which came from below, looked like dark caverns in which small, light-blue eyes flitted to and fro.

"Why isn't Len coming?" he asked sharply; his voice betrayed him to be a young man still, younger probably than his wife.

"The boy's got to eat supper first," the mother said defiantly.

"So?" the man growled. "Didn't get home till now, eh?"

"No. He had to go nearly to the creek to find the cows."

"That so?" This time the voice was less harsh, with a peculiar undertone almost of humour. Then, harshly again, "Well, hurry up. Get through and put the horses in."

Len who, during this skirmish, had allowed his eye to travel from one to the other, said, "Yes, father," and made a little more haste.

The man at the door reached for a chair, tested its strength by tilting it and pressing down with his hand on its back before using it as his seat. He removed his shoes and rose again.

"Where's Charlie?" he asked in his commanding way.

"Here," the little fellow said, showing his head around the partition between kitchen and stairway.

"Here?" the man repeated, almost roaring; for he needed to raise his voice only a very little in order to produce an intimidating effect.

"Here, father," Charlie corrected himself.

"That's better," said the man. "Run and get the parcels from the wagon. What you can't carry, you leave. If you drop anything, I'll drop you."

The boy shot past him and came to a stop at the door.

"Well," the man asked, "why don't you run?"

The boy was in a flurry. "I can't open the door. You are standing against it."

"Who's you?"

"Father, I mean."

"Once more, the whole thing."

"You are standing against it, father."

"All right." The giant stepped forward; the boy shot out.

Len had finished his supper. He looked for a crust of bread, carefully wiped his plate, and put it down, taking the crust along.

As he tried to slip out, the man spoke once more. "Turn the horses out when you've taken the harness off."

"Yes, father."

The woman raised the pan; and the eggs' sizzled and crackled in the lard. Her husband stepped up to the baby, lifted it out of the chair, and raised it to his head. It reached for his nose. He laughed, tossed it, and put it down again. Then he went past his wife who paid no attention to him and entered the living room where he sat down in a rickety easy-chair hardly strong enough to carry his weight.

In the centre of this room stood a large kitchen table one end of which was laid for his supper. Along the north wall stood the lounge; along the unbroken west wall, a sort of sideboard loaded with bric-a-brac, the remnants of a small bourgeois household of the better class. There were four straight-backed chairs, the cheapest that could be bought, and two easy-chairs, old, decrepit, the stuffing showing through the rents of the covers.

In a few minutes his wife brought his supper; whereupon he rose, sat down at the table, and ate in silence.

Meanwhile the boys—for Len helped Charlie before he attended to his own work—had taken a number of parcels into the kitchen; and Len had staggered in with a bag of flour on his back.

Next, Len unhitched the horses and led them into the stable where, by the light of a lantern, he took their harness off. In order to reach the backbands, he had to use a big packing case to stand on while Charlie unbuckled the belly straps. With all the strength of his undersized body he took hold of the harness while Charlie led the horses out from under. Thus he repaid his brother for the help he had given in unloading the parcels. At last the weary beasts which had that day gone thirty-four miles were let out through the backdoor of the barn; and with a tremendous effort Len lifted the heavy harness to the huge wooden pegs provided for it.

Then came a bit of frolic. It consisted in backing the wagon against the fence of the yard. The ground being uneven, each wheel, in topping the little hillocks, sent the vehicle this way or that; and the apparent wilfulness of the heavy wagon gave rise to a good deal of fun; for the boys admonished and scolded it like a living being. The task accomplished, work ended in a game of tag about the wheels.

Between the two brothers there was a difference in age of three years; but it did not show proportionately in their sizes; nor, just now, in any difference of maturity.

A few minutes later, however, the mother appeared in the lighted rectangle of the door, carrying three pails; and though Charlie continued to flit in and out between the wheels, tagging in the dark imaginary playmates and the excited dog, Len stopped at once, ran to meet his mother, and reached for one of her pails.

He and his mother went into the cow-lot, took a milking-stool each from the rail-fence, squatted down, and began to milk. The mother, having filled her pail first, took Len's to finish it; and Len carried hers to the house.

There, he had to move a chair behind the door alongside the separator which had previously been covered with rags but now stood resplendent, the only thing in the room which looked really clean. Climbing up on the chair, he emptied his brimful pail into the bowl and then returned to the cow-lot. He received the second pail from his mother and handed her the empty one. Thus, milking went on for another hour; and when it was finished, the separator bowl held two pails; and three more were waiting on the floor to be emptied.

All the time Charlie had been standing by the rail-fence, not so much looking on, for in spite of the moonlight it was too dark to see far in this realm of shadows, as keeping close for company's sake. He had jumped about from foot to foot, imagining that he was "floe-running" in the ditch. Floe-running was the great game in the thaw-up: square cakes of ice were cut out with the axe, not quite large enough to support a boy, but sufficiently buoyant to offer his foot resistance when he was swiftly running over a string of them, stepping on each and springing for the next floe before the last one sank.

When milking was finished, all three went to the house, and Mrs. Kolm started the separator for Len. As soon as it was running, Len, standing on the chair, kept it at its even speed. Whenever that speed slackened or was exceeded, a warning bell began to ring; and when the bell rang too often, a man's huge figure appeared in the doorway, greatly dreaded. The mother watched the bowl and the two pails, refilling the former and replacing the latter whenever needed.

Charlie was keeping out of sight. It was past his bed-time; and there was no escape unless he remained unseen. He was sitting in the stairway again, enjoying himself with being awake. The baby had been put to bed while the boys were unhitching the horses.

Thus the hour-hand on the battered alarm clock advanced to the figure eleven. In the living room, Mack Kolm had risen with a great stretching and yawning; he was tired and sleepy, for he had done a day's work, driving: not exactly hard work in the doing of it, but exhausting in its effects. Yet there remained one task which traditionally was reserved for him. In the stable, at the back of the yard, stood two little calves to be fed by hand; and in the pen east of it, there were ten or twelve little pigs that had gone hungry in expectation of that milk which was at last available for them.

So, while his wife prepared to wash the dishes, he entered the kitchen, put his shoes on again, and took two of the pails of skimmed milk while Len stood ready with the lantern to light him.

Man and boy had hardly left the house when the mother stepped into the opening of the stairway. Charlie, startled by her sudden appearance, jumped and scared her.

"Oh, mamma," he said, "I kept so still! I thought you'd never think of me if I kept quiet."

"Run along now," she said. "Before he comes in again."

"Night-night!" the boy called. "Are you going to bring me a light?"

"You don't need a light. The moon is shining."

"All right!" sang the child and ran upstairs.

The door opened, and Mack Kolm took the last of the milk. When he came back, Len followed him and deposited the lantern by the door. His mother was washing the dishes; he reached for a towel.

It was a quarter to twelve when this work was done.

"Go to bed now," Mrs. Kolm said, hanging the wet towel on a nail.

"Good-night, mother."

"Good-night."

Since the boys had grown too big to share the cot upstairs, Len slept on the couch in the living room. He sat down and began to undress. His mother brought him a pillow and a grey blanket. Mack Kolm looked on as if nothing concerned him.

At last Len said, "Good-night, father."

Mack slowly turned his head. He was sitting once more in the easy-chair, one leg thrown over its arm. "Sleep fast," he said. "We'll haul hay tomorrow from the meadow. I'll call you at five."

Mrs. Kolm stuck her head through the door. "Len isn't going to get up at five," she said with stolid defiance.

"We'll see about that," her husband replied indifferently. "I suppose I can wake the whole house if I set myself to it."

"He'll go to sleep again. Why do you pick on him?" She entered the room with a few of her better cups and saucers.

"Pick on him?" he repeated with a vast surprise in his voice. "Do you call it picking on him when I try to bring him up right? No child of mine is going to grow up a loafer."

"He isn't your child. He's mine." The woman's hands trembled as she rearranged the knick-knacks on the sideboard.

"You seem to be itching for a fight?"

"I am itching to blast you."

"That so? Well, I don't want to quarrel with you."

"You never do, do you?"

"No. But if you want to know whose word goes here, just say so." He rose.

For a moment the woman handled picture postcards, half broken cups, and dusty flower vases with nervous fingers.

"I'm waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"For you to do or say something that doesn't suit." He waited in vain. "Len," he sang out once more. "I'll call you at five. You'll help your mother to milk; and at half past six you'll be ready to start for the meadow. Understand?"

"Yes, father."

Mack waited a moment longer, his face to the door. Then, slowly, he turned, with a sidelong glance at his wife.

She tossed her head; but she did not speak.

"All right," said Mack Kolm, again with that humorous undertone in his voice. Then, picking up the lamp, in an almost friendly way, "Come on, Anna. Time to go to bed, I guess."