Judsonia weekly advance., 1921-12-08
CHAPTER VIII.

Martins work was in the Contra a small house in Red Creek, the only town of any size near the mine. Red Creek was in a fruit-farming and dairy region and looked it's prettiest on the spring evening when Cherry saw it first
 Her little house was a cottage with porch running across the front, where windows looked out from the sitting room and the front bedroom. Back of these rooms were dark lit tie bathroom that connected the front bedroom with another smaller bed room, little dining room and a kitchen. Martin, manifestation. had merely camped in kitchen and bedroom while awaiting his wife; but Cherry buttoned on her crisp little apron on the first morning after her arrival, and attacked the accumulated dishes in the sink and the scattered shirts and collars bravely.
 For a few weeks the novelty lasted and Cherry was enthusiastic about everything. She looked out across her dishpan at green fields and the begin ming of the farms; she saw the lilacs burst into fragrant plumes on the bare branches of her dooryard tree spring flushed the whole world with loveliness, and she was young, and healthy, and too busy to be home sick.
 The days went on and on, each bringing it's round of dishes, beds. sweeping, marketing, folding and un- folding tablecloths, going back and forth between kitchen and dining room Martins breakfast was either promptly served and well cooked, in which case Martin was silently satis- fled, or it was late and a failure, when he was very articulately disgusted; ill either case Cherry was left to clear and wash and plan for another meal in four hours more. She soaked fruit, beat up cake, chopped boxes into kindlings, heated a kettle of water and another kettle of water, dragged sheets from the bed only to replace them, filled dishes with food only to find them empty and ready to wash again.
 q get sick of it !" she told Martin. Well Lord" he exclaimed. Don't you think everybody does? Don't get sick of my work2 You ought to have the responsibility of it all for a whilel"
 His tone was humorously reproving rather than unkind. But such speech would fill Cherry's eyes with tears and cause her to go about the house all morning with heavy heart.
 She would find herself looking thoughtfully at Martin in these days, studying him as if he were an utter stranger. It bewildered her to feel that he actually was no more than that, after two years of marriage. She not only did not know him, but she had a baffled sense that the very nearness of their union prevented her from seeing him fairly. She knew that Eslle d}d him injustice in her thoughts. H must be injustice, decided Cherry. For Martin seemed to her less clever, less just, less intelligent, and less generous thanAthe average man of her acquaintance. And yet he did not seem to impress other people in the way he impressed her.
 He was extraordinarily healthy, and mad small syndpathy for illness, weak ness, for the Unfortunate, and the complaining He whistled over his dressing, read the paper at breakfast, and was gone. At noon he rushed in, always late, devoured his lunch ap- preciatively, and was gone again. At night he was usually tired, inclined to quarrel about small matters, inclined ~> disapprove of the new positions of bedroom furniture, or the way .rry's hair was dressed.
 loved to play poker and was hos
 le to a certain extent. He would
 e and joke over the prepara-
 'or a rarebit after game, and
 willingly walk five blocks for
 Cherry had forgotten to get it.
 W he liked to see her prettily
 w and then they motored
 ds from the mine more
 %te hearty chicken
 wenf>$Q cold supper in
 1orhood, with Five Hun-
 ollow. At ten their hostess
 tier into her kitchen; there
 lemonade and beer and rich
 e. Then the men would be-
 n poker hands, and the
 5 babies in low tones
 saw her husbaPd so
 interested as when
 before c/Anced to
 .epsr from Ne