The Balking of Christopher Author:Mary Freeman an excerpt from the beginning: THE spring was early that year. It was only the last of March, but the trees were filmed with green and paling with promise of bloom; the front yards were showing new grass pricking through the old. It was high time to plow the south field and the garden, but Christopher sat in his rocking-chair beside the... more » kitchen window and gazed out, and did absolutely nothing about it. Myrtle Dodd, Christopher's wife, washed the breakfast dishes, and later kneaded the bread, all the time glancing furtively at her husband. She had a most old-fashioned deference with regard to Christopher. She was always a little afraid of him. Sometimes Christopher's mother, Mrs. Cyrus Dodd, and his sister Abby, who had never married, reproached her for this attitude of mind. "You are entirely too much cowed down by Christopher," Mrs. Dodd said. "I would never be under the thumb of any man," Abby said. "Have you ever seen Christopher in one of his spells?" Myrtle would ask. Then Mrs. Cyrus Dodd and Abby would look at each other. "It is all your fault, mother," Abby would say. "You really ought not to have allowed your son to have his own head so much." "You know perfectly well, Abby, what I had to contend against," replied Mrs. Dodd, and Abby became speechless. Cyrus Dodd, now deceased some twenty years, had never during his whole life yielded to anything but birth and death. Before those two primary facts even his terrible will was powerless. He had come into the world without his consent being obtained; he had passed in like manner from it. But during his life he had ruled, a petty monarch, but a most thorough one. He had spoiled Christopher, and his wife, although a woman of high spirit, knew of no appealing. "I could never go against your father, you know that," said Mrs. Dodd, following up her advantage. "Then," said Abby, "you ought to have warned poor Myrtle. It was a shame to let her marry a man as spoiled as Christopher."« less