“Well, put it away.  You can’t card and spin and knit it tonight.”

“It will have to be washed first, you foolish boy.”

Dorian got his mother to bed without further reference to shoes.  He went to his own room with a conscience not altogether easy.  He lighted his lamp, which was a good one, for he did a lot of reading by it.  The electric wires had not yet reached Greenstreet.  Dorian stood looking about his room.  It was not a very large one, and somewhat sparsely furnished.  The bed seemed selfishly to take up most of the space.  Against one wall was set some home-made shelving containing books.  He had quite a library.  There were books of various kinds, gathered with no particular plan or purpose, but as means and opportunity afforded.  In one corner stood a scroll saw, now not very often used.  Pictures of a full-rigged sailing vessel and a big modern steamer hung on the wall above his books.  On another wall were three small prints, landscapes where there were great distances with much light and warmth.  Over his bed hung an artist’s conception of “Lorna Doone,” a beautiful face, framed in a mass of auburn hair, with smiling lips, and a dreamy look in her eyes.

“That’s my girl,” Dorian sometimes said, pointing to this picture.  “No one can take her from me; we never quarrel; and she never scolds or frowns.”

On another wall hung a portrait of his father, who had been dead nine years.  His father had been a teacher with a longing to be a farmer.  Eventually, this longing had been realized in the purchase of the twenty acres in Greenstreet, at that time a village with not one street which could be called green, and without a sure water supply for irrigation, at least on the land which would grow corn and potatoes and wheat.  To be sure, there was water enough of its kind down on the lower slopes, besides saleratus and salt grass and cattails and the tang of marshlands in the air.  Schoolmaster Trent’s operations in farming had not been very successful, and when he died, the result of his failure was a part of the legacy which descended to his wife and son.

Dorian took a book from the shelf as if to read; but visions intruded of some beautiful volumes, now somewhere down the canal, a mass of water-soaked paper.  He could not read.  He finished his last chocolate, said his prayers, and went to bed.

Saturday was always a busy day with Dorian and his mother; but that morning Mrs. Trent was up earlier than usual.  The white muslin curtains were already in the wash when Dorian looked at his mother in the summer kitchen.

“What, washing today!” he asked in surprise.  Monday was washday.

“The curtains were black; they must be clean for tomorrow.”

“You can see dirt where I can’t see it.”

“I’ve been looking for it longer, my boy.  And, say, fix up the line you broke the other day.”

“Sure, mother.”

The morning was clear and cool.  He did his chores, then went out to his ten-acre field of wheat and lucerne.  The grain was heading beautifully; and there were prospects of three cuttings of hay; the potatoes were doing fine, also the corn and the squash and the melons.  The young farmer’s heart was made glad to see the coming harvest, all the work of his own hands.