"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!"
"Wrong! How else do you expect me to talk?--if I talk at all! Doesn't it mean anything to you that the farm's mortgaged to the very last cent, and that it doesn't begin to produce what it ought to because we can't beg, borrow, or steal the money that ought to be put into it? Can you just shut your eyes to the fact that the house--the finest in the county when Grandfather Gray built it--is falling to pieces for want of necessary repairs? And look at our barns and sheds--or don't look at them if you can help it! Doesn't it gall you to dress as you do, because you have to turn over most of what you can earn teaching to the family--of course, you never can earn much, because you haven't had a good enough education yourself to get a first-class position--so that the younger girls can go to school at all, instead of going out as hired help? Can't you feel the injustice of being poor, and dirty, and ignorant, when thousands of other people are just _rotten_ with money?"
"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."