In villages
like Riverboro in those early days there was no putting away,
even of men or women so demented as to be something of a menace
to the peace of the household; but Lois Boynton was so gentle, so
fragile, so exquisite a spirit, that she seemed in her sad
aloofness simply a thing to be sheltered and shielded somehow in
her difficult life journey. Ivory often thought how sorely she
needed a daughter in her affliction. If the baby sister had only
lived, the home might have been different; but alas! there was
only a son,--a son who tried to be tender and sympathetic, but
after all was nothing but a big, clumsy, uncomprehending
man-creature, who ought to be felling trees, ploughing, sowing,
reaping, or at least studying law, making his own fortune and
that of some future wife. Old Mrs. Mason, a garrulous,
good-hearted grandame, was their only near neighbor, and her
visits always left his mother worse rather than better. How such
a girl as Waitstill would pour comfort and beauty and joy into a
lonely house like his, if only he were weak enough to call upon
her strength and put it to so cruel a test. God help him, he
would never do that, especially as he could not earn enough to
keep a larger family, bound down as he was by inexorable
responsibilities.
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