had almost ceased to be concerned with pain or pleasure, like the
wasted wax images in old churches, it still vibrated with his
feelings and became quick again for him. His chagrins shrivelled
her. When he was hurt and suffered silently, something ached in
her. On the other hand, when he was happy, a wave of physical
contentment went through her. If she wakened in the night and
happened to think that he had been happy lately, she would lie
softly and gratefully in her warm place.
“Rest, rest, perturbed spirit,” she sometimes whispered to him in
her mind, when she wakened thus and thought of him. There was a
singular light in his eyes when he smiled at her on one of his
good days, as if to tell her that all was well in his inner
kingdom. She had seen that same look again and again, and she
could always remember it in the dark,—a quick blue flash, tender
and a little wild, as if he had seen a vision or glimpsed bright
uncertainties.
XIII
The next few weeks were busy ones on the farm. Before the wheat
harvest was over, Nat Wheeler packed his leather trunk, put on
his “store clothes,” and set off to take Tom Welted back to
Maine. During his absence Ralph began to outfit for life in Yucca
county. Ralph liked being a great man with the Frankfort
merchants, and he had never before had such an opportunity as
this. He bought a new shot gun, saddles, bridles, boots, long and
short storm coats, a set of furniture for his own room, a
fireless cooker, another music machine, and had them shipped to
Colorado. His mother, who did not like phonograph music, and
detested phonograph monologues, begged him to take the machine at
home, but he assured her that she would be dull without it on
winter evenings. He wanted one of the latest make, put out under
the name of a great American inventor.
Some of the ranches near Wested’s were owned by New York men who
brought their families out there in the summer. Ralph had heard
about the dances they gave, and he way counting on being one of
the guests. He asked Claude to give him his dress suit, since
Claude wouldn’t be needing it any more.
“You can have it if you want it,” said Claude indifferently “But
it won’t fit you.”
“I’ll take it in to Fritz and have the pants cut off a little and
the shoulders taken in,” his brother replied lightly.
Claude was impassive. “Go ahead. But if that old Dutch man takes
a whack at it, it will look like the devil.”
“I think I’ll let him try. Father won’t say anything about what
I’ve ordered for the house, but he isn’t much for glad rags, you
know.” Without more ado he threw Claude’s black clothes into the
back seat of the Ford and ran into town to enlist the services of
the German tailor.
Mr. Wheeler, when he returned, thought Ralph had been rather free
in expenditures, but Ralph told him it wouldn’t do to take over
