We can pull through
some way."
"Very well, Robert."
"I must have rest. All the bounce has gone out of me, Mate," he
said with sad lines in his face. "Any extra work here is out of the
question. I can only shamble around-an excuse for a man."
The wife had ceased to smile. Her strenuous cheerfulness could
not hold before his tragically drawn and bloodless face.
"I'll go wherever you think best, Robert It will be just as well for
the boys. I suppose there is a school there?"
"Oh, yes. At any rate, they can get a year's schooling in nature."
"Well-no matter, Robert; you are the one to be considered." She
had the self-sacrfficing devotion of the average woman. She
fancied herself hopelessly his inferior.
They had dwelt so long on the crumbling edge of poverty that they
were hardened to its threat, and yet the failure of Robert's health
had been of the sort which terrifies. It was a slow but steady
sinking of vital force. It had its ups and downs, but it was a
downward trail, always downward. The time for sell-deception had
passed.
His paper paid him a meager salary, for his work was prized only
by the more thoughtful readers of the Star.
In addition to his' regular work he occasionally hazarded a story
for the juvenile magazines of the East.
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