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Title: The Old Gray Homestead
Author: Frances Parkinson Keyes
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9748]

[This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD GRAY HOMESTEAD ***

my nearest neighbors and my best friends for the last fifteen years, and who have taught me to love the country and the people in it, this quiet story of a farm is affectionately and gratefully dedicated.

"For Heaven's sake, Sally, don't say, 'Isn't it hot?' or, 'Did you ever
know such weather for April?' or, 'Doesn't it seem as if the mud was just
as bad as it used to be before we had the State Road?' again. It _is_
hot. I never did see such weather. The mud is _worse_ if anything. I've
said all this several times, and if you can't think of anything more
interesting to talk about, I wish you'd keep still."

Sally Gray pushed back the lock of crinkly brown hair that was always
getting in her eyes, puckered her lips a little, and glanced at her
brother Austin without replying, but with a slight ripple of concern
disturbing her usual calm. She was plain and plump and placid, as sweet
and wholesome as clover, and as nerveless as a cow, and she secretly
envied her brother's lean, dark handsomeness; but she was conscious of a
little pang of regret that the young, eager face beside her was already
becoming furrowed with lines of discontent and bitterness, and that the
expression of the fine mouth was rapidly growing more and more hard and
sullen. Austin had been all the way from Hamstead to White Water that
day, stopping on his way back at Wallacetown, to bring Sally, who taught
school there, home for over Sunday; his little old horse, never either
strong or swift, was tired and hot and muddy, and hung its unkempt head
dejectedly, apparently having lost all willingness to drag the
dilapidated top-buggy and its two occupants another step. Austin's
manner, Sally reflected, was not much more cheerful than that of his
horse; while his clothes were certainly as dirty, as shabby, and as
out-of-date as the rest of his equipage.

"It's a shame," she thought, "that Austin takes everything so hard. The
rest of us don't mind half so much. If he could only have a little bit of
encouragement and help--something that would make him really happy! If he
could earn some money--or find out that, after all, money isn't
everything--or fall in love with some nice girl--" She checked herself,
blushing and sighing. The blush was occasioned by her own quiet happiness
in that direction; but the sigh was because Austin, though he was well
known to have been "rather wild," never paid any "nice girl" the
slightest attention, and jeered cynically at the mere suggestion that he
should do so.

"How lovely the valley is!" she said aloud at last; "I don't believe
there's a prettier stretch of road in the whole world than this between
Wallacetown and Hamstead, especially in the spring, when the river is so
high, and everything is looking so fresh and green."

at as long as we live--and certainly it's about all we've seen so far! If
there'd been only you and I, Sally, we could have gone off to school, and
maybe to college, too, but with eight of us to feed and clothe, it's no
wonder that father is dead sunk in debt! Certainly I shan't travel much,"
he added, laughing bitterly, "when he thinks we can't have even one hired
man in the future--and certainly you won't either, if you're fool enough
to marry Fred, and go straight from the frying-pan of one
poverty-stricken home to the fire of another!"

"Wrong! How else do you expect me to talk?--if I talk at all! Doesn't it
mean anything to you that the farm's mortgaged to the very last cent, and
that it doesn't begin to produce what it ought to because we can't beg,
borrow, or steal the money that ought to be put into it? Can you just
shut your eyes to the fact that the house--the finest in the county when
Grandfather Gray built it--is falling to pieces for want of necessary
repairs? And look at our barns and sheds--or don't look at them if you
can help it! Doesn't it gall you to dress as you do, because you have to
turn over most of what you can earn teaching to the family--of course,
you never can earn much, because you haven't had a good enough education
yourself to get a first-class position--so that the younger girls can go
to school at all, instead of going out as hired help? Can't you feel the
injustice of being poor, and dirty, and ignorant, when thousands of other
people are just _rotten_ with money?"

"I've heard of such people, but I've never met any of them around here,"
returned his sister quietly. "We're no worse off than lots of people,
better off than some. I think we've got a good deal to be thankful for,
living where we can see green things growing, and being well, and having
a mother like ours. I wish you could come to feel that way. Perhaps you
will some day."

"Why don't you marry Fred's cousin, instead of Fred?" asked her brother, changing the subject abruptly. "You could get him just as easy as not--I could see that when he was here last summer. Then you could go to Boston to live, get something out of life yourself, and help your family, too."

"No one in the family but you would want help from me--at that price,"
returned Sally, still speaking quietly, but betraying by the slight
unevenness of her voice that her quiet spirit was at last disturbed more
than she cared to show. "Why, Austin, you know how I lo--care for Fred,
and that I gave him my word more than two years ago! Besides, I heard you
say yourself, before you knew he fancied me, that Hugh Elliott drank--and
did all sorts of other dreadful things--he wouldn't be considered
respectable in Hamstead."

Austin laughed again. "All right. I won't bring up the subject again. Ten
years from now you may be sorry you wouldn't put up with an occasional
spree, and sacrifice a silly little love-affair, for the sake of
everything else you'd get. But suit yourself. Cook and wash and iron and
scrub, lose your color and your figure and your disposition, and bring
half-a-dozen children into the world with no better heritage than that,
if it's your idea of bliss--and it seems to be!"