The one disappointment of his life was the lack of those sturdy sons and daughters who, to his mind, should have surrounded the virtuous man in his old age.

They had not come into the world.

His wife, a good woman and energetic helpmeet, had brought him but the one studious son.
Ephraim was thirty-two years of age when a young girl, strong, beautiful, impetuous, entered under the sloping eaves of his father's huge gray shingle roof.

The girl was a niece on the maternal side.

Her New England mother had, by freak of love, married a reckless young Englishman of gentle blood who was settled on a Canadian farm.