He checkmated her, re-lit his cigar and waited
until she should notice it. And when she did not notice, gravely he moved
back his queen and let the game continue. How many hundreds of games, he
thought, Edith must have played with him in the long years when his spirit
was dead, for her now to take such chances. Nearly every Friday evening for
nearly sixteen years.
Before that, Judith his wife had been here. It was then that the city had
been young, for to Roger it had always seemed as though he were just
beginning life. Into its joys and sorrows too he had groped his way as most
of us do, and had never penetrated deep. But he had meant to, later on.
When in his busy city days distractions had arisen, always he had promised
himself that sooner or later he would return to this interest or passion,
for the world still lay before him with its enthralling interests, its
beauties and its pleasures, its tasks and all its puzzles, intricate and
baffling, all some day to be explored.
This deep zest in Roger Gale had been bred in his boyhood on a farm up in
the New Hampshire mountains. There his family had lived for many
generations. And from the old house, the huge shadowy barn and the crude
little sawmill down the road; from animals, grown people and still more
from other boys, from the meadows and the mountain above with its cliffs
and caves and forests of pine, young Roger had discovered, even in those
early years, that life was fresh, abundant, new, with countless glad
beginnings.
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