“I don’t want to fight my lot in life,” Jerome replied, defiantly, “but I thought I’d go to school this winter.”

“You won’t grub a bit better for one more winter of schoolin’,” said his uncle, “and there’s another reason—­your mother, she’s gettin’ older, an’ Elmira, she’s a good-lookin’ girl, but she’s gettin’ wore to skin an’ bones.  They’re both on ’em workin’ too hard.  You’d ought to try to have ’em let up a little more.”

“I wouldn’t have either of ’em lift a finger, if I could help it, the Lord knows!” Jerome cried, bitterly.

Ozias nodded, grimly.  “Women wa’n’t calculated to work as hard as men, nohow,” he said.  “Seems as if a man that’s got hands, an’ is willin’, might be let to keep the worst of it off ’em, but he ain’t.  Seems as if I might have been able to do somethin’ for Ann when Abel quit, but I wa’n’t.

“There’s one thing I’ve got to be thankful for, an’ that is—­a hard Providence ain’t been able to hurt Belindy any more than it would a feather piller.  She dints a little, and cries out when she’s hurt, an’ then she settles back again, smooth and comfortable as ever.

“I don’t s’pose you’ll understand it, J’rome, because you ain’t come to thinking of such things yet, an’ showed your sense that you ain’t, but I took that very thing into account when I picked out my wife.  There was another girl that I used to see home some, but, Lord, she was a high stepper!  Handsome as a picture she was; there ain’t a girl in this town to-day that can compare with her; but her head was up, an’ her nose quiverin’, an’ her eyes shinin’.  I knew she liked me pretty well, but, Lord, it was no use!  Might as well have set a blooded mare to ploughin’.  She was one of the sort that wouldn’t have bent under hardship; she’d have broke.  I knew well enough what a dog-life a wife of mine would have to lead—­jest enough to keep body and soul together, an’ no extras—­an’ I wa’n’t goin’ to drag her into it, an’ I didn’t.  I knew just how she’d strain, an’ work her pretty fingers to the bone to try to keep up.  I made up my mind that if I married at all I’d marry somebody that wouldn’t work more’n she could possibly help—­not if we were poor as Job’s off ox.

“So I looked ‘round an’ got Belindy.  I spelled her out right the first time I see her.  She ‘ain’t had nothin’, but I dun’no’ but she’s been jest as happy as if she had.  I ’ain’t let her work hard; she ‘ain’t never bound shoes nor done anythin’ to earn a dollar since I married her.  Couldn’t have kept the other one from doin’ it.”

“What became of her?” asked Jerome.

“Dead,” replied Ozias.

Jerome asked nothing further.  It ended in his leaving school and going to work.  This course met with some opposition from his mother, who had madly ambitious plans for him.  She had influenced Elmira to leave school the year before, that she might earn more, and thereby enable her brother to study longer, but he knew nothing of that.