Natures Serial Story | Page 5

about everybody
and everything except herself. It was apparent that she had inherited not
a little of the "Martha" spirit, and "was careful about many things;" but
her slight tendency to worry saved others a world of worriment, for she
was the household providence, and her numberless little anxieties led to
so much prevention of evil that there was not much left to cure. Such
was her untiring attention that her thoughtless, growing children
seemed cared for by the silent forces of nature. Their clothes came to
them like the leaves on the trees, and her deft fingers added little
ornaments that cost the wearers no more thought than did the blossoms
of spring to the unconscious plants of the garden. She was as essential
to her husband as the oxygen in the air, and he knew it, although
demonstrating his knowledge rather quietly, perhaps. But she
understood him, and enjoyed a little secret exultation over the strong
man's almost ludicrous helplessness and desolation when her

occasional absences suspended for a brief time their conjugal
partnership. She surrounded the old people with a perpetual
Indian-summer haze of kindliness, which banished all hard, bleak
outlines from their late autumnal life. In brief, she was what God and
nature designed woman to be--the gracious, pervading spirit, that filled
the roomy house with comfort and rest. Sitting near were her eldest son
and pride, a lad about thirteen years of age, and a girl who, when a
baby, had looked so like a boy that her father had called her "Johnnie,"
a sobriquet which still clung to her. Close to the mother's side was a
little embodiment of vitality, mischief, and frolic, in the form of a
four-year-old boy, the dear torment of the whole house.
There remain but two others to be mentioned, and the Clifford family
will be complete, as constituted at present. The first was the youngest
son of the aged man at the head of the table. He had inherited his
father's features, but there was a dash of recklessness blended with the
manifest frankness of his expression, and in his blue eyes there was
little trace of shrewd calculation or forethought. Even during the quiet
midday meal they flashed with an irrepressible mirthfulness, and not
one at the table escaped his aggressive nonsense. His brother, two or
three years his senior, was of a very different type, and seemed
somewhat overshadowed by the other's brilliancy. He had his mother's
dark eyes, but they were deep and grave, and he appeared reserved and
silent, even in the home circle. His bronzed features were almost
rugged in their strength, but a heavy mustache gave a touch of
something like manly beauty to his rather sombre face. You felt
instinctively that he was one who would take life seriously--perhaps a
little too seriously--and that, whether it brought him joy or sorrow, he
would admit the world but charily to his confidence.
Burtis, the youngest brother, had gone through college after a sort of
neck-or-nothing fashion, and had been destined for one of the learned
professions; but, while his natural ability had enabled him to run the
gantlet of examinations, he had evinced such an unconquerable dislike
for restraint and plodding study that he had been welcomed back to the
paternal acres, which were broad enough for them all. Mr. Clifford, by
various means, had acquired considerable property in his day, and was

not at all disappointed that his sons should prefer the primal calling to
any other, since it was within his power to establish them well when
they were ready for a separate domestic life. It must be admitted,
however, that thus far the rural tastes of Burtis were chiefly for free
out-of-door life, with its accessories of rod, gun, and horses. But
Leonard, the eldest, and Webb, the second in years, were true children
of the soil, in the better sense of the term. Their country home had been
so replete with interest from earliest memory that they had taken root
there like the trees which their father had planted. Leonard was a
practical farmer, content, in a measure, to follow the traditions of the
elders. Webb, on the other hand, was disposed to look past the outward
aspects of Nature to her hidden moods and motives, and to take all
possible advantage of his discoveries. The farm was to him a laboratory,
and, with something of the spirit of the old alchemists, he read, studied,
and brooded over the problem of producing the largest results at the
least cost. He was by no means deficient in imagination, or even in
appreciation of the beautiful side of nature, when his thoughts were
directed to this phase of the outer world; but his imagination had
become materialistic, and led only to an