The barnyard took on an orderly appearance, the stables were
repaired, the picket fences gleamed white in the sun, the roof of
the house was painted red, the sides a shimmering white, and there
were green window shutters and green window boxes filled with
geraniums. The front yard was kept mowed, and there were great
flower-beds encircled by snow-white boulders; a hammock was swung
in the shade of two great oaks, and--worst of all! a tennis-court
was laid out alongside the house.
Tennis! That was a game played only by "dudes"! Passers-by looked
with scorn upon young David Windom and his flaxen-haired wife
as they played at the silly game before supper every evening. And
they went frequently to the "opera house" at the county seat, ten
miles up the river; they did not wait for summer to come with its
circus, as all the other farmers were content to do; whenever there
was a good "show" at the theatre in town they sent up for reserved
seats and drove in for supper at the principal hotel. Altogether,
young Mrs. Windom was simply "raising Cain" with the conventions.
Strange to say, David did not "go to smash." To the intense chagrin
of the wiseacres he prospered despite an unprecedented disregard
for the teachings of his father and his grandfather before him. The
wolf stayed a long way off from his door, the prophetic mortgage
failed to lay its blight upon his lands, his crops were bountiful,
his acreage spread as the years went by,--and so his uncles, his
cousins and his aunts were never so happy as when wishing for the
good old days when his father was alive and running the farm as it
should be run! If David had married some good, sensible, thrifty,
hard-working farmer's daughter,--Well, it might not have meant an
improvement in the crops but it certainly would have spared him
the expense of a tennis court, and theatre-going, and absolutely
unnecessary trips to Chicago or Indianapolis whenever SHE took it
into her head to go.
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