In Her Warmth (cont’d)

In Her Warmth  (cont’d)

I tell the following story as one among many that might have done as well to indicate how a bad spirit may effect long pain on a group of people and qualify life to pieces. Janettel Pierce and Jason Simplot married officially after six years of partnering. They already owned the rights to a child of seven years who came with them Sundays to church where he sang in a choir for small persons. His voice sweet, high, dulcet, had caught the attention of the adult choral director at the university. That sir made it his business to drop in now and then on this couple to encourage them to provide vocal lessons for the boy in order to prepare him for a future in song and possibly opera. These two guardians agreed for the most part that such a career would meet both their expectations of secure life for him as well as their hopes for his reputation (and theirs, of course).

When it became clear after three years of study and tutorage that Winston would have to remove to a school far away for more advanced instruction, they began to entertain second thoughts. The husband did, at least, and the wife, feeling the weight of losing from her sight a child she had only begun to mould and form, began to turn taciturn and sleepless. He, the husband caring for her equanimity, expressed some flippant concern for their peace and household comfort. She, favoring her own position in the matter, called him a nuisance and a labor. Not to be outdone, he returned the compliment and fairly soon thereafter the two each began to carry on a secret affair with the choral master and found themselves feeling less inclined to spend quality time with either the other partner or the child in question. So ended a perfectly promising relationship. The child left the practice of singing behind altogether and now works for the Ford Company installing radios on an assembly line out of Windsor. The choral master teaches still at the university and the female half of the bickering partnership has begun to take piano lessons at the age of thirty-seven.