: The Old Gray Homestead by Keyes Frances Parkinson - Love stories; New England Fiction; Farm life Fiction

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THE OLD GRAY HOMESTEAD

BY FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES

To the farmers, and their mothers, wives, and daughters, who have been my nearest neighbors and my best friends for the last fifteen years, and who have taught me to love the country and the people in it, this quiet story of a farm is affectionately and gratefully dedicated.

THE OLD GRAY HOMESTEAD

Sally Gray pushed back the lock of crinkly brown hair that was always getting in her eyes, puckered her lips a little, and glanced at her brother Austin without replying, but with a slight ripple of concern disturbing her usual calm. She was plain and plump and placid, as sweet and wholesome as clover, and as nerveless as a cow, and she secretly envied her brother's lean, dark handsomeness; but she was conscious of a little pang of regret that the young, eager face beside her was already becoming furrowed with lines of discontent and bitterness, and that the expression of the fine mouth was rapidly growing more and more hard and sullen. Austin had been all the way from Hamstead to White Water that day, stopping on his way back at Wallacetown, to bring Sally, who taught school there, home for over Sunday; his little old horse, never either strong or swift, was tired and hot and muddy, and hung its unkempt head dejectedly, apparently having lost all willingness to drag the dilapidated top-buggy and its two occupants another step. Austin's manner, Sally reflected, was not much more cheerful than that of his horse; while his clothes were certainly as dirty, as shabby, and as out-of-date as the rest of his equipage.

"It's a shame," she thought, "that Austin takes everything so hard. The rest of us don't mind half so much. If he could only have a little bit of encouragement and help--something that would make him really happy! If he could earn some money--or find out that, after all, money isn't everything--or fall in love with some nice girl--" She checked herself, blushing and sighing. The blush was occasioned by her own quiet happiness in that direction; but the sigh was because Austin, though he was well known to have been "rather wild," never paid any "nice girl" the slightest attention, and jeered cynically at the mere suggestion that he should do so.

"How lovely the valley is!" she said aloud at last; "I don't believe there's a prettier stretch of road in the whole world than this between Wallacetown and Hamstead, especially in the spring, when the river is so high, and everything is looking so fresh and green."

"Fortunate it is pretty; probably it's the only thing we'll have to look at as long as we live--and certainly it's about all we've seen so far! If there'd been only you and I, Sally, we could have gone off to school, and maybe to college, too, but with eight of us to feed and clothe, it's no wonder that father is dead sunk in debt! Certainly I shan't travel much," he added, laughing bitterly, "when he thinks we can't have even one hired man in the future--and certainly you won't either, if you're fool enough to marry Fred, and go straight from the frying-pan of one poverty-stricken home to the fire of another!"

"Oh, Austin, it's wrong of you to talk so! I'm going to be ever so happy!"

"I've heard of such people, but I've never met any of them around here," returned his sister quietly. "We're no worse off than lots of people, better off than some. I think we've got a good deal to be thankful for, living where we can see green things growing, and being well, and having a mother like ours. I wish you could come to feel that way. Perhaps you will some day."

"Why don't you marry Fred's cousin, instead of Fred?" asked her brother, changing the subject abruptly. "You could get him just as easy as not--I could see that when he was here last summer. Then you could go to Boston to live, get something out of life yourself, and help your family, too."

"No one in the family but you would want help from me--at that price," returned Sally, still speaking quietly, but betraying by the slight unevenness of her voice that her quiet spirit was at last disturbed more than she cared to show. "Why, Austin, you know how I lo--care for Fred, and that I gave him my word more than two years ago! Besides, I heard you say yourself, before you knew he fancied me, that Hugh Elliott drank--and did all sorts of other dreadful things--he wouldn't be considered respectable in Hamstead."

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