Mahailey was shrewd in her estimate of people, and Claude thought her judgment sound in a good many things.  He knew she sensed all the shades of personal feeling, the accords and antipathies in the household, as keenly as he did, and he would have hated to lose her good opinion.  She consulted him in all her little difficulties.  If the leg of the kitchen table got wobbly, she knew he would put in new screws for her.  When she broke a handle off her rolling pin, he put on another, and he fitted a haft to her favourite butcher-knife after every one else said it must be thrown away.  These objects, after they had been mended, acquired a new value in her eyes, and she liked to work with them.  When Claude helped her lift or carry anything, he never avoided touching her, this she felt deeply.  She suspected that Ralph was a little ashamed of her, and would prefer to have some brisk young thing about the kitchen.

On days like this, when other people were not about, Mahailey liked to talk to Claude about the things they did together when he was little; the Sundays when they used to wander along the creek, hunting for wild grapes and watching the red squirrels; or trailed across the high pastures to a wild-plum thicket at the north end of the Wheeler farm.  Claude could remember warm spring days when the plum bushes were all in blossom and Mahailey used to lie down under them and sing to herself, as if the honey-heavy sweetness made her drowsy; songs without words, for the most part, though he recalled one mountain dirge which said over and over, “And they laid Jesse James in his grave.”

IV

The time was approaching for Claude to go back to the struggling denominational college on the outskirts of the state capital, where he had already spent two dreary and unprofitable winters.

“Mother,” he said one morning when he had an opportunity to speak to her alone, “I wish you would let me quit the Temple, and go to the State University.”

She looked up from the mass of dough she was kneading.

“But why, Claude?”

“Well, I could learn more, for one thing.  The professors at the Temple aren’t much good.  Most of them are just preachers who couldn’t make a living at preaching.”

The look of pain that always disarmed Claude came instantly into his mother’s face.  “Son, don’t say such things.  I can’t believe but teachers are more interested in their students when they are concerned for their spiritual development, as well as the mental.  Brother Weldon said many of the professors at the State University are not Christian men; they even boast of it, in some cases.”

“Oh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate they know their subjects.  These little pin-headed preachers like Weldon do a lot of harm, running about the country talking.  He’s sent around to pull in students for his own school.  If he didn’t get them he’d lose his job.  I wish he’d never got me.  Most of the fellows who flunk out at the State come to us, just as he did.”