Beauty for Ashes (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

milk always came from a herd of specially selected cows.

      Gloria was hungry for the first time since the tragedy. Mr. Sutherland talked with the mother. She told him that they had lived there five years, ever since her husband had failed in business. He had taken what little he had left, come up here into the woods, and cleared this land that an uncle had left him. They were getting on all right till her husband broke his leg. So now she had to do something to help out with the doctor's bills. But they were going to get on all right. The leg was knitting nicely and the doctor was willing to wait, and the children were selling vegetables in the next little town. It was only two miles away, and the boy had a small express wagon. Sometimes his sister went with him. They were doing very well and were thankful that things were no worse.

      Gloria gave a startled look around on the cheap furnishings of the little front parlor that had been turned into a wayside inn. She caught a glimpse of the kitchen beyond and a bedroom opening out of it where a man lay on the bed with a weight attached to his foot to keep the leg in position. Could anybody live in such crowded quarters and really be happy? Thankful that it was no worse? She thought of her own lovely home, which she had known most of her life.

      "It isn't as if we had to live in the city," said the mother happily. "This is a nice, healthy place for the children, and we can raise most everything we really need to eat, and of course we don't require fine clothing." Her voice had a lilt in it, and there was a dimness in Mr. Sutherland's eyes as he paid the modest bill.

      "You don't charge enough for such wonderful food!" he said and threw down another bill on the table as he picked up his hat and hurried out.

      "Oh, but–" said the mother, examining the money. "This is too much! My price covers the cost and gives us enough. We really couldn't take this!" She followed them out to the car.

      "It's all right!" said Gloria's father, putting his foot on the starter. "Tell your husband that's just from one brother to another. I used to be a farmer's boy myself once, and I know times can get pretty hard. I'd like to think of you here getting on. Sometime maybe I'll come back again!" He threw in his clutch and was off, leaving the bewildered little mother standing at the gate clutching the bill and staring after them as if they were a couple of fairies riding in a coach.

      "Oh, Dad, I'm glad you did that!" said Gloria, leaning her cheek lovingly against his shoulder. "They're sweet, aren't they? And they're happy, too, in spite of everything!"

      "There are lots worse fates than living in a little cottage in the woods," said the father musingly. "When I was a little tad, we had a house as near like that as two peas, and Father and Mother were happy as two clams."

      "Oh, Dad, you never told us about that!"

      "Well," 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