Before this he had accepted everything his father and
mother had said or done without question. Only once before
had he doubted them. It was several years before. A man
named Skinner had bought from Tom's father the quarter
section that Jim Russell now farmed, paying down a
considerable sum of money, but evil days fell upon the
man and his wife; sickness, discouragement, and then,
the man began to drink. He was unable to keep up his
payments and Tom's father had foreclosed the mortgage.
Tom remembered the day the Skinners had left their farm,
the woman was packing their goods into a box. She was a
faded woman in a faded wrapper, and her tears were falling
as she worked. Tom saw her tears falling, and he had told
her with the awful cruelty of a child that it was their
own fault that they had lost the farm. The woman had
shrunk back as if he had struck her and cried "Oh, no!
No! Tom, don't say that, child, you don't know what you
say," then putting her hands on his shoulders she had
looked straight into his face--he remembered that she
had lost some teeth in front, and that her eyes were
sweet and kind. "Some day, dear," she said, "when you
are a man, you will remember with shame and sorrow that
you once spoke hard to a broken-hearted, homeless woman."
Tom had gone home wondering and vaguely unhappy, and
could not eat his supper that night.
He remembered it all now, remembered it with a start,
and with a sudden tightening of his heart that burned
and chilled him.
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