"What is important to you?" she said. "What is really important?" The February sun, between snows, was doing its best, slanting onto the fields, a better day than yesterday for all of them. The mice and voles, rabbits and squirrels, would be having a better day. A few more like this one and the trees would be fooled into budding. A scattering of naive robins would be pecking at the lawn for early worms. Another false spring. "Oh, I suppose I know," he said. "It must be our two boys -- but you, of course, more than anything. I care about my work, the house, the car. And the land, definitely the land. I wouldn't want to be without the trees and that little stream by the house." It troubled him that day and the next, not so much the question as why she had asked. The question sounded darker than it should. Why now? Was it somehow the weather? Then it turned cold again, the sun disappeared, and it began to snow. The snow barely covered the driveway, and the county plow scraped past on the road, twirling its yellow light. They could have driven to a movie or a restaurant. Yet he felt bound to the house, and he built a fire in the little red stove and sat with his chin on his fist. "You're making trouble for yourself. You know that," she said. "What did you think I meant? I'm not dissatisfied, but I've wondered what you think of your life, and of me." "I love it all," he said. "It all seems just fine." But he thought, @3Why did she say "dissatisfied"?@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HIS PRAYER TO BEN JONSON by ROBERT HERRICK PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 2 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL LOUISA MAY ALCOTT by LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON THE OTHER WORLD by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE |