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MilColl_WWI_82_Box2_436
MISS SUE AND THE SHERIFF 11
in their minds pictures of Mama's days at Six Pound, as of some fairyland. But to Mary and to settle down in her new home, her husband, the care of her children, were commitments of her whole spirit. And happy concentration on each day with them she simply never got around to revisiting Warren County.
There was in her no conflict of interests as between Martha and Mary; she combined them in such a person as the Master would have gone back in the kitchen to talk to. At any rate the ministers of the Gospel found her such a person. I never saw her in church a great deal; it was understood by all that deafness made it impracticable for her to go. But her children went by the example of a spirit that ministered to the church, and the church came to her corner by the lamp and the reading table, with the Sheriff opposite her by the fire.
In the autumn afternoon of yesterday I stood and looked up the hill so that the slanting rays of the sun met my eyes across the eaves of the old house-the old house that had its beginning before the Revolution as an oak-log cabin of a settler. The cabin is now the dining room, and fourteen other rooms have grown to it in sprawling fashion. To the left by the railroad the sun caught the lines of the burying ground where Miss Sue sleeps beside the Sheriff. In the flooding light, broken by shadows across the fields,- here I seem to catch the image of her smile.
