COMMUTER'S WIFE 57 



Father was exultant. Here at last was the 

 gratitude and appreciation that had too seldom 

 crowned his efforts to better his fellows. 



Little by little, Peter told father of his past. It 

 seemed that since coming to this country sixteen 

 years before, either ill luck or an unseasonable 

 desire to better themselves, which really amounts to 

 the same thing, had kept them on the move. Their 

 very home-leaving had been ill judged, unpropitious, 

 and hurried, that Peter might escape army service 

 which would necessarily delay the early marriage 

 upon which Karen was set, she then being a fellow- 

 worker with him on a milk and cheese farm. 



Peter? Oh, Peter had at that time evidently 

 looked stoically upon matrimony as an estate not to 

 be entered hurriedly ; he would have preferred to go 

 alone to America, establish himself, and then send 

 for Karen. He already had the responsibility of 

 partially providing for his old mother, a widow who 

 still lived in a couple of rooms by the windmill 

 where his father had worked. As he said, " she was 

 homesick away from the sound of the sails going 

 round," and " I too," he added, " think no sound 

 can be made so fine as when the sails and the wind 

 struggle together and there is much wheat to grind." 

 Peter was a Hollander who loved his country in a 



