There was no one in the world who adored her as uncritically as did this boy with the clubfoot. He was a good boy, she knew, with a streak of morbid melancholy which was curiously attractive to her adventurous temperament. His face, with its bulging forehead and deep dark eyes, hiding stars of light in them like gleams at the bottom of a well, was an unusual one for a country boy, and made her wonder at times if there could be more in him than any one suspected. In his childhood his clubfoot had been a torment to him, and for this reason he had kept away from the rough sports of other children. "You'd rather farm than do anything else, wouldn't you, John Abner?" she asked abruptly. "Except read. I'm glad winter is coming, so I can stay in the house and read." "You wouldn't like to go to boarding school in the city?" He shook his head, flinching as if from the cut of a whip. "Not with the other boys. I'd rather stay in the country with Father and you and the animals." His sympathetic understanding of animals was one of the strongest bonds between them. From his birth he had known what it was to suffer and endure. "I hoped that the new kind of shoe would make it easier for you," she said presently. "Is it comfortable?" "If it weren't so heavy. They are all heavy." She sighed, for her heart was drooping with pity. John Abner had penetrated the armour of her arrogance in its one weak spot, which was her diffused maternal instinct. The longing to protect the helpless was still alive in her. At home they found Fluvanna in a clean apron, with a blazing; fire and a lavish Sunday dinner awaiting them. Roast duck with apple sauce, candied sweet potatoes, tomatoes stewed with brown sugar, and plum pudding, which was Nathan's favourite sweet. True, it was the one abundant meal of the week; but while she sat at the head of her table listening to the chatter of happy children, Dorinda remembered the frugal Sunday dinners of her mother and father, and her eyes smarted with tears. That, she had learned, was the hidden sting of success; it rubbed old sores with the salt of regret until they were raw again. In the hall, after dinner, while Dorinda was fastening a worn blue cape over her satin dress, Nathan stood gazing thoughtfully up the staircase. "Have you ever thought of putting a stove in the back hall, Dorinda?" he asked. "It would make a lot of difference in the comfort of the house, and it would help heat the bedrooms upstairs." She turned and gazed at him, surprised at this fresh proof of his ingenuity. Yes, it was a good idea; she wondered why she had never thought of it herself. Indeed, since he had mentioned it, it seemed to her that it was what she had always intended to do. "If only we could have had it in Ma's lifetime," she said. "It would have been such a help to her neuralgia."