said her father musingly, "there never was any time to tell about things, not since you were born. We always had so much going on in the house, and you were so governessed and nurse-ridden and kindergartened and schooled while you were growing up that I scarcely ever got a chance at you. And then later, you had such a gang of hangers-on at the house! I've always wanted to. But how could I expect you'd want to hear about a little cottage on a big farm where I was born?"
"Oh, tell me now," said Gloria, settling back comfortably. "Only I'm sorry Vanna isn't along. She would enjoy it, too! I guess we should have brought her, only that would have left Mother all alone and she wouldn't have stood for that a minute!"
"No," said the father sadly, "I guess not. But I don't know as there is so much to tell. Perhaps you wouldn't understand it all either. It was different from these days."
"Different? How?" asked Gloria. "Tell me all about it, please!"
"Why, we were just a family by ourselves. Of course there were neighbors who came sometimes to call, but mostly we did things together and were just a family. Outside things weren't always crowding in. And then our ways were different. My people were religious. We always went to church every Sunday twice and sometimes three times, though it was a long ride, and sometimes the ride was a walk when a horse was lame. Father never missed a Sunday if he could help it. But times have changed!" He ended with a sigh, almost as if he regretted it.
"It seems strange that you were brought up that way, Dad, and now you never go near a church," said his daughter thoughtfully, trying to make her father's tale seem real.
"Yes, I suppose so," said the man, looking off into the distance. "I suppose my mother would have felt terribly about it if she had lived to see these days. Why, my father used to ask a blessing at the table before every meal, and we always had family prayers every morning and evening. We've come a long way from such doings."
Their way led now through a lovely woodland with pleasant little villages sprinkled here and there. The father had chosen the back roads purposely to get away from traffic. Everything was new and different from the regular highway to which Gloria was accustomed. Cultivated nature and beautiful scenery were a familiar, everyday thing to her since babyhood, but nature in the wild, just nature, and human nature bearing the hardships of life, taking toil and deprivation happily and struggling to overcome the curse that was upon the soil and humanity, she had not seen before, or if she had seen it, she had not noticed. Now that her eyes were opened by her own first suffering, everything seemed different.
They passed some little children going out to a barn with their older brother to feed the pigs. Gloria watched the struggling, snorting, grunting, slimy creatures fighting each other for the best morsels, seeing no connection between them and the great Virginia hams that appeared on the home table succulent and tender, spicy with cloves, and wearing rings of pineapple on their velvety brown crust. She wondered why people cared to bother with such loathsome creatures as pigs, till her father suddenly remarked that it used to be his duty to feed the pigs every day when he was a boy, and how proud he was when they grew fat and marketable.
Gloria's eyes got larger as she listened. She was seeing a side of life that she had never before even dreamed of. Her father feeding pigs! She thought of the three stately peacocks that strutted sometimes on the terraces at home, a fancy of her mother's they had been, and suddenly she laughed aloud.
Her father looked down anxiously at her and then joined in, a sudden light of relief in his eyes. Gloria had forgotten her sorrow for the moment and had laughed! He laughed himself at the thought of himself a little barefoot boy going out to the barn with a bucket of refuse for the pigs. It was incongruous. He thought of himself in his bonding office in the city managing affairs of finance that often settled national questions. And yet he had been a barefoot boy feeding pigs and chickens and milking the cow!
"If I had known then that things would change so," he said gravely and then laughed once more. "If I could have looked forward and seen myself in the office, handling important affairs." He paused again and looked down at Gloria.
"Well, what?" said Gloria breathlessly. "What would you have done?"
"Why, I expect," said her father thoughtfully, "I wouldn't have been so conscientious about feeding the pigs! I'm afraid I wouldn't have thought that it was worthwhile to bother if I was going to be rich in the end."
"And was it?" asked the daughter, drawing her brows together. "Wouldn't it have been better to let someone else who wasn't going to amount to anything afterward feed the pigs, and you spend your time in getting ready to be a great businessman?"
"No," said her father, thoughtfully shaking his head. "It might be that if I hadn't done my best feeding the pigs and doing all the other duties that were required of me, I wouldn't ever have been in the position I am now!"
"Father! How could you make that out?"
"Why, I had to learn responsibility and honesty and diligence and reliability and regularity and conscientiousness somewhere, and I guess in my case feeding the pigs was just as good a way to learn those things as any. Another thing, I had to learn to do things I didn't like to do. You know I never did really like to feed pigs, though I wouldn't have owned it for a farm. It wasn't considered good sportsmanship to give in to one's likes and dislikes."
Gloria sat quietly considering that for some time.
They changed places after a while, Gloria taking the wheel, and they drove on into the lovely afternoon among the mountains with now a glimmering lake lying like silver in the distance, now a river winding. They did not touch New York nor anything that could have reminded Gloria of that city. They went by byways not highways, taking a road when it looked attractive, whether it went in a special direction or not. Deep into the heart of a woods they would wander, and out again into a little settlement, so out of the way that the dwellers hadn't even thought to put out a TOURISTS sign, so quiet that it seemed almost like a deserted village.
Many places they passed reminded her father of his childhood, and seeing she enjoyed it, he talked on freely. It seemed that he, too, took pleasure in going back over those old days. It had been so many years since he had anyone to talk to about them. Adelaide, his wife, had always been restless when he mentioned his early days and upbringing. She had been a Boston girl and considered herself above him, even though he did bring her more wealth than she ever had before.
It was not until the shades of evening began to drop down and seem to wrap them in more cozily to each other, that Gloria, after quite a silence, ventured hesitantly, "Dad, is it true that all men nowadays–that is all young men nowadays are–well– aren't quite true? I mean, do they all go after–low-down girls and think nothing of it? Even if–they're–going to be married?"
Her father gave her a startled look. "Certainly not!" he said decidedly. Then he stopped short and tried to think what young men of his acquaintance he could be sure of. "Certainly not," he repeated with satisfaction. "I have in mind several who are not in the least that way."
But he suddenly remembered that they were not young men in Gloria's clique. They were plain, hardworking young fellows in his office, and he knew their ways, had had them shadowed before ever he trusted them with important business.
"Whatever put such a question as that into your head?" he asked, turning keen eyes and searching her through the dusk.
"Why, Mother said they all were," said Gloria, struggling to explain. "Mother laughed at me when I said I felt as though Stan had never been mine because of his going up to New York to that girl–" Her voice trailed off into silence, and she turned her eyes to the woods they were passing through.
"Poor
