“Oh, I do’ know”—in a slightly mollified tone. “A piece o’ toast, mebbe—’f you don’t get it too all-fired hard.” “Well, I’ll try not.” Nellie went out, and there was silence in the room. The wind came in through the open window, shaking little ripples of perfume into the room. The sun was setting and a broad band of reddish gold sunk down the wall. Demaris watched it sinking lower, and thought how slowly the sun was settling behind the straight pines on the crests of the blue mountains. “Oh,” said Mrs. Ferguson, “what a wretched creature I am! Just a-sufferin’ day an’ night, year in an’ year out, an’ a burden on them that I’ve slaved fer all my life. Many’s the night I’ve walked with you ’n my arms till mornin’, Demaris, an’ never knowed what it was to git sleepy or tired. An’ now you git mad the minute I go into a spell.” Demaris stood upright with a tortured look. “Oh, ma,” she exclaimed. Her voice was harsh with pain. “I ain’t mad. Don’t think I’m mad. I can’t cry out o’ pity ev’ry time you have a spell, or I’d be cryin’ all the time. An’ besides, to-night I’m so—disappointed.” “What you disappointed about?” “Why, you know.” Her lips trembled. “The excursion.” Mrs. Ferguson opened her eyes. “Oh, I’d clean fergot that.” She looked as if she were thinking she would really have postponed the spell, if she had remembered. “That’s too bad, Demaris. That’s always the way.” She began to cry helplessly. “I’m always in the way. Always mis’rable myself, an’ always makin’ somebody else mis’rable. I don’t see what I was born fer.” “Never you mind.” Demaris leaned over suddenly and put her arms around her mother. “Don’t you think I’m mad. I’m just disappointed. Now don’t cry. You’ll go and make yourself worse. An’ there comes pa; I hear him cleanin’ his boots on the scraper.” Mr. Ferguson stumbled as he came up the steps to the kitchen. He was very tired. He was not more than fifty, but his thin frame had a pitiable stoop. The look of one who has struggled long and failed was on his brown and wrinkled face. His hair and beard were prematurely gray. His dim blue eyes had a hopeless expression that was almost hidden by a deeper one of patience. He wore a coarse flannel shirt, moist with perspiration, and faded blue overalls. His boots were wrinkled and hard; the soil of the fields clung to them. “Sick ag’in, ma?” he said. “Sick ag’in! Mis’rable creature that I am! I’ve got that awful pain over my right eye ag’in. I can’t think where it comes from. I’m nearly crazy with it.” “Well, I guess you’ll feel a little better after you git some tea. I’ll go an’ wash, an’ then rub your head, while Demaris gits a bite to eat. I’ve plowed ever since sun-up, an’ I’m tired an’ hungry.” He returned in a few minutes, and took Demaris’s place. He sighed deeply, but silently, as he sat down.