Sam went quietly around the house and stood by an old shed, a relic of an
attempt by Windy to embark in raising chickens. He wanted to continue the
thoughts of his mother. He began recalling her youth and the details of a
long talk they had held together on the lawn before the house. It was
extraordinarily vivid in his mind. He thought that even now he could
remember every word that had been said. The sick woman had talked of her
youth in Ohio, and as she talked pictures had come into the boy's mind.
She had told him of her days as a bound girl in the family of a thin-
lipped, hard-fisted New Englander, who had come West to take a farm, and
of her struggles to obtain an education, of the pennies saved to buy
books, of her joy when she had passed examinations and become a school
teacher, and of her marriage to Windy--then John McPherson.
Into the Ohio village the young McPherson had come, to cut a figure in the
town's life. Sam had smiled at the picture she drew of the young man who
walked up and down the village street with girls on his arms, and who
taught a Bible class in the Sunday school.
When Windy proposed to the young school teacher she had accepted him
eagerly, thinking it unbelievably romantic that so dashing a man should
have chosen so obscure a figure among all the women of the town.
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