FORE:The only people who would have been sorry if he had died were the children. Harry was popular with them, as he had been with baby Fanny long ago, because he made funny faces and emitted strange, unexpected sounds. He was unlike the accepted variety of grown-up people, who were seldom amusing or surprising, and one could take liberties with him, such as one could not take with f?ather or Maude. Also, being blind, one could play on him the most fascinating tricks.
FORE:As for Alice, he found to his surprise that she was not so dangerous even as Rose, for an ideal is never so enslaving as a habit. He avoided Cheat Land, and there was nothing to bring her across his path as long as he did not seek her. So the yoke of woman dropped from Reuben's neck, leaving him a free man."You'll never do it yourself," said Naomi, who was spending a few days at Odiam.
FORE:"My child's dying. Get up, you brute. Fetch the doctor. My child's dying!"
THREE:
THREE:She could never guess what that child meant to Reuben. It meant a fellow labourer on his farm, a fellow fighter on Boarzell, and after he was dead a Man to carry on his work and his battle. At last he would have someone to share his ambitionthat child should be trained up in the atmosphere of enterprise; as other fathers taught their children to love and serve God, so Reuben would teach this son to love and serve Odiam. He would no longer strive alone, he would have a comrade, a soldier with him. And after this boy there would be other boys, all growing up in the love of Odiam, to live for it.
