The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1934-04-27

eight rooms and three stories, built on
its site, $50 Priscilla road, Fairview by
Allan and Anne Stanwick, five years
before. But Anne knew the little white
house had never been built at all. It
had grown out Of the dreams of her
husband and herself, grown as surely
as the lawn had grown.
Anne, you see, knew that the dream
was q planting. You dreamed your
dream and there it was just as big as
life, but only you could see it. Then,
after q while, your dream got itself
set upon a stone foundation that the
whole world could see. Then pine
weather boards and hardwood floors
and ceilings closed in a room and then
a story and, first thing you knew there
was your dream come true.
The little white house was a house Of
many windows, not to look out of be-
cause just beyond them vas the worlds
end as far as Anne Stan Wick'S inter-
est went. They were for the sun to
pour into at every moment from the
moment it rose to the instant it set.
And Anne never thought of her adj
dress as "459 Priscilla road" She
thought of it as "This House Faces the
Morning." and that was one of the
million reasons why it was her third
dearest possession.
: Her two dearest possessions were
never compared by her for order Of
precedence. They were the two Allan
StanwickS, her husband and her son.
They, too, were growing, like the house
and the lawn and the garden; little
Allan, three, in stature and in mind;
big Allan, twenty-eight, in breadth Of
vision and in contentment.
Everything that touched Anne Stan
wick had to grow in some way or an
other. Everything always had. When
she wa a little girl she used to think
she could hear them at it. It was the
tiniest sound, like the one-hundredth
part of the faintest whisper. Yet it
could crash through the din of traffic
or human voices in conversation. In
spring, when the buds were at their
highest, she would hear the leaves
pushing themselves out straight so they
could open and the grass, thrusting
upward, like gnomes stretching, and
the sap, running in plants and trees,
like the rushing Of many waters, or
the laughter of a little brook. But
when she was grown up, this gift de-
parted from her, either because child
hood had gone or because she had
just imagined it all. She never knew
which.
Yet, standing TN her garden now
watching it grow, she seemed to be
listening, too, dressed in a tight sweat
er of faded green, an old brown skirt,
and socks that came to her ankles, and
old brogans. On her slim, capable
hands she wore gauntlets and in one
of them she held a pruning knife.
You'd never think to look at Anne
Stanwick that she'd be the kind to
think of her colonial house as a dream
enclosed in wood and stone and follow
ing the SUI around with its many win
dows. You'd think, if you looked twice
and you would look twice-that here
was a calm and comely woman. You'd
think, here is a woman happy without
fever, a wife so confidant of her hus-
bands love that she leans against it
unconsciously, as against a great, firm
stone, a mother so sanely accomplished
in motherhood that she is like a tree
growing.
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Her brow was low and broad. Her hair
was dark brown and sun bleached here
and there. Her mouth was gentle. Her
chin firm. Her small, round head was
set firmly on a columnar neck. Her
skin had been caressed by the sun, but
not roughened. Its texture was as
smooth as a beauty expert dreams about
but rarely meets. She lacked a year
of being in her mid-twenties.
Now, what went on behind those
serene eyes and that broad low brow
were for her husband and her son to
know and no one else. For she would
have said, had she ever thought of it,
that no one else would be either inter-
ested or influenced.
What wa going on there now had to
do with weeds.
Taking her eyes from the little white
house, she searched out weeds among
the young plants. Some weeds, she re-
Elected, were beautiful and attractive,
but they had no place in a garden be-
cause they killed the plants that were
useful or attractive to man either by
robbing them of nutriment from the
soil or by wrapping themselves around
and strangling them. So whenever she
found she killed it.
AS she worked it occurred to her
that weeds grew among men as they
did in gardens. Some men and Wom-
en- and all personal views were weeds
Extravaganza for instance, was a weed
of which she knew a great deal because
it had been her own personal vice until
she had Scotched it.
She had scotched it because it would
have hindered the growth, or even kill
ed the healthy Stanwick joint bank
account, another thing which had
grown from contact with her. That
bank account meant education and a
start in life for little Allan and the as
surance for big Allan and herself of a
comfortable old age.
If she had gone on-as she had been
brought up to do-buying clothes for
parties, sports, and every other occa-
sion, she and her two Allans would be
living t0dav in a rented ploce opd tboro