Nora had always been fond of children, and she found the Sharp children unusually interesting.  It was curious to see how widely the ideas of this, the first generation born in the new country, differed, not only from those of their parents, but from what they must have inevitably been if they had remained in the environment that would have been theirs had they been born and brought up back in England.

All of their dreams as to what they were going to do when they grew to manhood were colored and shaped by the outdoor life they had been accustomed to.  They were to be farmers and cattle raisers on a large scale.  Mrs. Sharp used to shake her head sometimes as she heard these grandiloquent plans, but Nora could see that she was secretly both proud and pleased.  After all, why should not these dreams be realized?  Everything was possible to the children of this new and wonderful country, if they were only industrious and ambitious.

“I don’t know, I’m sure, what their poor dear grandfather would have said if he had lived to hear them,” she used to say sometimes to Nora. “He used to think that there was nothing so genteel as having a good shop.  He quite looked down on farming folk.  Still, everything is different out here, ideas as well as everything else, and I’m not at all sure they won’t be better off in the end.”

In which notion Nora secretly agreed with her.  To picture these healthy, sturdy, outdoor youngsters confined to a little dingy shop such as their mother had been used to in her own childhood was impossible, as she recalled to her mind the pale, anemic-looking little souls she had occasionally seen during her stay in London.  Was not any personal sacrifice worth seeing one’s children grow up so strong and healthy, so manly and independent?

This, then, was the true inwardness of it all; the thing that dignified and ennobled this life of toil and hardship, deprived of almost all the things which she had always regarded as necessary, that the welfare, prosperity and happiness of generations yet to come might be reared on this foundation laid by self-denial and deprivation.

She felt almost humbled in the presence of this simple, unpretentious, kindly woman who had borne so much without complaint that her children might have wider opportunities for usefulness and happiness than she had ever known.

Not that Mrs. Sharp, herself, seemed to think that she was doing anything remarkable.  She took it all as a matter of course.  It was only when something brought up the subject of the difficulties of learning to do without this or that, that she alluded to the days when she also was inexperienced and had had to learn for herself without anyone to advise or help her.

Miles away from any help other than her husband could give her, she had borne six children and buried one.  And although the days of their worst poverty seemed safely behind them, they had been able to save but little, so that they still felt themselves at the mercies of the changing seasons.  Given one or two good years to harvest their crops, they might indeed consider themselves almost beyond the danger point.  But with seven mouths to feed, one could not afford to lose a single crop.