, 1922-01-04
CHAPTER WI.

- FrN
Martins work was in the Contra
Costa valley, and he and Cherry had
a small house in Red Creek, the only
town of any size nea the mine. Red
Creek was in a f~ruit-farming and
dairy region and looked its prettiest
on the spring evening when Cherry
say 1t first.
Her little house was a cottage with
a porch running across the front,
where windows looked n from the
sitting room and the front bedroom.
Back of these rooms we're a dark lit
tie bathroom that connected the front
bedroom with another smaller bed
room. a little dining room and a
kitchen. Martin, m~an-fashion, 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
loneliness, and she was young, and
healthy, and too busy to be home
sick.
The days went on and on, each
h,fna;n,r tee ,a,.nI - 1s-t-. 49,
sweeping, marketing, folding n UNI
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 salts
fed, or 1t was late and a failure, when
he was very articulately disguised; in
either case Cherry was left to clear
and wash n 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, filed dishes with food only to
find them empty and ready to wash
again.
Il get sick of it!' she told Martin.
"Well, Lord !" he exclaimed. Don't
you think everybody does? Don't i
get sick of my work? You ought to
have the responsibility of it all for
a while ~
His tone was h~umorously ~reproving
rather than unkind. But such a
speech would fill Cherry's eyes with
tears and cause her to go about the
house all morning with a heavy
heart.
She would find herself looking
th~oughtfully at Martin in these days,
studying him as If he were an utter
stranger. 1t bewiIdered 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
she did him injustice in her thoughts.
1t must be injustice, decided Cherry.
For Martin seemed to her less clever,
less just, less intelligent, and less
generous than the 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
had small sympathy for illness, weak
ness, for the unfortunate, and the
complaining. He whistled over his
dressing, read the paper at breakfast,
mud was gone. At noon he rushed in,
always late, devoured his lunch APP
preciatlvely, and was gone again. At
night he was usually tired, inclined, to
quarrel about small matters, inclined
to dlsapprove of the new positions of
the bedroom furniture, or the way
Cherry's hair WIS dressed.
He loyed to play poker and was hos
pitable to q certain extent. He would
whistle and joke over the prepara-
lions for a rarebit after a game, and
would willingly walk five blocks for
beer If Cherry had forgotten to get It.
On Sunday he liked to see her prettily
Gowned now and then they motored
with his friends from the mine; more
often walked, ate a hearty chicken
dinner, and went to a cold supper in
the nelghborhood, with give Hun
dred'' to follow. At ten their hostess
would flutter into her kitchen there
would be lemonade and beer and rich.
layer cake. The n the men would be-
gin to match poker hands, and the
women to discuss babies In low tones.
Cherry never saw her husband so
animated Or so interested as when
men he had known before CHANGED to
drift Into town. mining men from Ne