Holcroft was indeed very lonely as he drove through the bare March fields and leafless woods on his way to town.  The sky had clouded again, like his prospects, and he had the dreary sense of desolation which overwhelms a quiet, domestic man who feels that his home and all to which he clings are slipping from him.  His lot was hard enough at best, and he had a bitter sense of being imposed upon and wronged by Lemuel Weeks.  It was now evident enough that the widow and her daughter had been an intolerable burden to his neighbor, who had taken advantage of his need and induced him to assume the burden through false representation.  To a man of Holcroft's simple, straightforward nature, any phase of trickery was intensely repugnant, and the fact that he had been overreached in a matter relating to his dearest hopes galled him to the quick.  He possessed the strong common sense of his class; his wife had been like him in this respect, and her influence had intensified the trait.  Queer people with abnormal manners excited his intense aversion.  The most charitable view that he could take of Mrs. Mumpson was that her mind--such as she had--was unbalanced, that it was an impossibility for her to see any subject or duty in a sensible light or its right proportions.

Her course, so prejudicial to her own interests, and her incessant and stilted talk, were proof to his mind of a certain degree of insanity, and he had heard that people in this condition often united to their unnatural ways a wonderful degree of cunning.  Her child was almost as uncanny as herself and gave him a shivering sense of discomfort whenever he caught her small, greenish eyes fixed upon him.

"Yet, she'll be the only one who'll earn her salt.  I don't see how I'm going to stand 'em--I don't, indeed, but suppose I'll have to for three months, or else sell out and clear out."

By the time he reached town a cold rain had set in.  He went at once to the intelligence office, but could obtain no girl for Mrs. Mumpson to "superintend," nor any certain promise of one.  He did not much care, for he felt that the new plan was not going to work.  Having bartered all his eggs for groceries, he sold the old stove and bought a new one, then drew from the bank a little ready money.  Since his butter was so inferior, he took it to his friend Tom Watterly, the keeper of the poorhouse.

Prosperous Tom slapped his old friend on the back and said, "You look awfully glum and chopfallen, Jim.  Come now, don't look at the world as if it was made of tar, pitch, and turpentine.  I know your luck's been hard, but you make it a sight harder by being so set in all your ways.  You think there's no place to live on God's earth but that old up-and-down-hill farm of yours that I wouldn't take as a gift.  Why, man alive, there's a dozen things you can turn your hand to; but if you will stay there, do as other men do.  Pick out a smart, handy woman that can make butter yaller as gold, that'll bring gold, and not such limpsy-slimsy, ghostly-looking stuff as you've brought me.  Bein' it's you, I'll take it and give as much for it as I'd pay for better, but you can't run your old ranch in this fashion."

"I know it, Tom," replied Holcroft ruefully. "I'm all at sea; but, as you say, I'm set in my ways, and I'd rather live on bread and milk and keep my farm than make money anywhere else.  I guess I'll have to give it all up, though, and pull out, but it's like rooting up one of the old oaks in the meadow lot.  The fact is, Tom, I've been fooled into one of the worst scrapes I've got into yet."

"I see how it is," said Tom heartily and complacently, "you want a practical, foresighted man to talk straight at you for an hour or two and clear up the fog you're in.  You study and brood over little things out there alone until they seem mountains which you can't get over nohow, when, if you'd take one good jump out, they'd be behind you.  Now, you've got to stay and take a bite with me, and then we'll light our pipes and untangle this snarl.  No backing out!  I can do you more good than all the preachin' you ever heard.  Hey, there, Bill!" shouting to one of the paupers who was detailed for such work, "take this team to the barn and feed 'em.  Come in, come in, old feller!  You'll find that Tom Watterly allus has a snack and a good word for an old crony."

Holcroft was easily persuaded, for he felt the need of cheer, and he looked up to Tom as a very sagacious, practical man.  So he said, "Perhaps you can see farther into a millstone than I can, and if you can show me a way out of my difficulties you'll be a friend sure enough."

"Why, of course I can.  Your difficulties are all here and here," touching his bullet head and the region of his heart. "There aint no great difficulties in fact, but, after you've brooded out there a week or two alone, you think you're caught as fast as if you were in a bear trap.  Here, Angy," addressing his wife, "I've coaxed Holcroft to take supper with us.  You can hurry it up a little, can't you?"

Mrs. Watterly gave their guest a cold, limp hand and a rather frigid welcome.  But this did not disconcert him. "It's only her way," he had always thought. "She looks after her husband's interests as mine did for me, and she don't talk him to death."

This thought, in the main, summed up Mrs. Watterly's best traits.

She was a commonplace, narrow, selfish woman, whose character is not worth sketching.  Tom stood a little in fear of her, and was usually careful not to impose extra tasks, but since she helped him to save and get ahead, he regarded her as a model wife.

Holcroft shared in his opinion and sighed deeply as he sat down to supper. "Ah, Tom!" he said, "you're a lucky man.  You've got a wife that keeps everything indoors up to the mark, and gives you a chance to attend to your own proper business.  That's the way it was with mine.  I never knew what a lopsided, helpless creature a man was until I was left alone.  You and I were lucky in getting the women we did, but when my partner left me, she took all the luck with her.  That aint the worst.  She took what's more than luck and money and everything.  I seemed to lose with her my grit and interest in most things.  It'll seem foolishness to you, but I can't take comfort in anything much except working that old farm that I've worked and played on ever since I can remember anything.  You're not one of those fools, Tom, that have to learn from their own experience.  Take a bit from mine, and be good to your wife while you can.  I'd give all I'm worth--I  know that aint much--if I could say some things to my wife and do some things for her that I didn't do."

Holcroft spoke in the simplicity of a full and remorseful heart, but he unconsciously propitiated Mrs. Watterly in no small degree.  Indeed, she felt that he had quite repaid her for his entertainment, and the usually taciturn woman seconded his remarks with much emphasis.

"Well now, Angy," said Tom, "if you averaged up husbands in these parts I guess you'd find you were faring rather better than most women folks.  I let you take the bit in your ............