A Man's World

kson's staff. "Al" was my own age, but seemed older and Margot was a year younger. Until I went away to s

ate run in the back yard of the parsonage and sometimes had as many as thir

have to. But if there were not eggs to satisfy the demands of the two families, we stole. I think we blamed it on the chickens. Al and I were always full of great projects for improving the stock or the run and so needed money. There was little danger of discovery, because housekeeping

I remember one time w

eal them from you

, as we started after the spoils. "But I

ppings, it was for the masculine members of the firm to take them. But Margot knew, just as well as we did, how many eggs were laid and how far our sales exceeded that number. But the candy she bought did no

ree parts. Al and I always put most of our share back into the business. Margot spent her

ed laughingly to encourage us in it. I spoke of it once at home, but the Father shook his head and said it would grieve him if I married outside o

slip down in the social scale. For several days we did not speak to each other. I refused to let any misguided Episcopalians in my yard. As the chicken run was in my domain, Al, who was smaller than I, became an apostate. But Margot held out stubborn

more thought of kissing her than her brother. The best thing about her was that she also loved King Arthur. Mary had given me a copy of Malory. Up in our hay-loft, Margot and I used to take turns reading it a

e bottom shelf there were three big lexicons, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Next to them was the great family Bible. Then came Cruden's Concordance, a geography of Palestine, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Motley's "Dutch

h great pains, I arranged the books so that the absence of Froissart would not be noticed. Until I went East to school at sixt

us both under constraint, bringing back those old days when we had planned to ma

pularity. One had been started a few score miles from our village and the year I went away to school, the

we sat stiffly, repeating every ten minutes a promise to write to each other. I remember we figured out that it would take me ten years to finish th

one. Boys at school, she said, had their walls covered with pictures of girls, she would not think of letting hers be put up with a hundred others. When

l through me. The vision came to me of Mary nursing the baby and the beauty of her white breast. The idea connected itself with Margot, strug

ge. I suppose I stopped

e matter?"

thi

off and sat

ed, coming over and standing in

n't wrestle like that. We

to make fun of me and my new lon

ot! Don't you

tand what I meant-I was not clear about it myself. But she fell suddenly silent. And while I sat there with my arm about h

it. The emotion, I suppose, comes but once, and is too fleeting to have won a place in