"She doesn't know the right one." "But neither do I." "I want the blue dorking." "I have a bad eye for color; I might catch something gray." "I want the dorking; she's stopped laying." "Is that your motive for taking her life? It would be a terrible principle to apply indiscriminately!" "The cook wants to know how she is to get the vegetables out of the holes in the garden to-day--under all this ice." "How would she get the vegetables out of the garden under all this ice if there were no one on the place but herself? I warrant you she'd have every variety." "It's a pity we are not able to hire a man. If we could hire a man to help her, I wouldn't ask you. It's hard on the cook, to make her suffer for our poverty." "A little suffering in that way will do her a world of good," said David, cheerily. His mother did not hesitate, provocation or no provocation, to sting and reproach him in this way. She had never thought very highly of her son; her disappointment, therefore, over his failure at college had not been keen. Besides, tragical suffering is the sublime privilege of deep natures: she escaped by smallness. Nothing would have made her very miserable but hunger and bodily pains. Against hunger she exercised ceaseless precautions; bodily pains she had none. The one other thing that could have agitated her profoundly was the idea that she would be compelled to leave Kentucky. It was hard for her to move about her house, much less move to Missouri. Not in months perhaps did she even go upstairs to bestow care upon, the closets, the bed, the comforts of her son. As might be expected, she considered herself the superior person of the family; and as often happens, she imposed this estimate of herself upon her husband. The terrifying vanity and self-sufficiency of the little-minded! Nature must set great store upon this type of human being, since it is regularly allowed to rule its betters. But his father! David had been at home two months now, for this was the last of February, and not once during that long ordeal of daily living together had his father opened his lips either to reproach or question him. Letters had been received from the faculty, from the pastor; of that David was aware; but any conversation as to these or as to the events of which they were the sad consummation, his father would not have. The gulf between them had been wide before; now it was fathomless.