He was fed and clothed by unseen hands. And in
return he, as they did, levied upon nature's store of raw material and
paid for what he got with timber, rough shaped to its ultimate uses by
the labor of his hands.
All his life Hollister had been able to command money without effort.
Until he came back from the war he did not know what it meant to be
poor. He had known business as a process in which a man used money to
make more money. He had been accustomed to buy and sell, to deal with
tokens rather than with things themselves. Now he found himself at the
primitive source of things and he learned, a little to his
astonishment, the pride of definitely planned creative work. He began
to understand that lesson which many men never learn, the pleasure of
pure achievement even in simple things.
For two or three days he occupied himself at various tasks on the
flat. He did this to keep watch over Doris, to see that she did not
come to grief in this unfamiliar territory. But he soon put aside
those first misgivings, as he was learning to put aside any fear of
the present or of the future, which arose from her blindness.
Pages:
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193