Old Wives for New: A Novel

Excerpt from Old Wives for New: A Novel

August shone hot and clear upon the hills of southern Indiana. The grain had been cut, and quail were gleaning in the stubble, with a pause now and then to whistle from the gray zigzag fence. But the timothy was still standing, waist deep; the full-blown blossoms of clover, white and pink, were scenting the air; and down where the now shallow creek bustled along, over and among the stones of its rocky bed, the cornstalks were rustling like so many ladies in stiff green Sunday silk.

There was a path through the great hillside meadow. It began at the barnyard, where the thrashing machine was making the sweat pour from a score of workers, to trickle and glisten upon their sun-scorched faces and bared, hairy chests. It clove the sea of gold-tinted grass straight to an island where a clump of pear trees reveled in the western sun; thence it wound down the slope to emerge into the road along the creek bottom. On that midway island, in the shade of the pear trees, sprawled in graceful idleness a boy of seventeen, like a young corn and wine god. His eyes were full of dreams; upon his handsome features lay a faint smile of content that it was summer and the free open air, with youth rollicking through his veins, and all the world before him in the glory of its veil of illusion and hope. His carelessly roving glance spied and paused upon a pale-blue sunbonnet far away, down toward the creek fence.

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