t was a
fine prospect. Ben Westerveld, listening tolerantly to the boy's
opinions, felt a great surge of joy that he did not show. Here, at last,
was compensation for all the misery and sordidness and bitter
disappointment of his married life.

That married life had endured now for more than thirty years. Ben
Westerveld still walked with a light, quick step--for his years. The
stocky, broad-shouldered figure was a little shrunken. He was as neat
and clean at fifty-five as he had been at twenty-five--a habit that
requires much personal courage on a farm and that is fraught with
difficulties. The community knew and respected him. He was a man of
standing. When he drove into town on a bright winter morning and entered
the First National Bank in his big sheepskin coat and his shaggy cap and
his great boots, even Shumway, the cashier, would look up from his desk
to say: "Hello, Westerveld! Hello! Well, how goes it?"

When Shumway greeted a farmer in that way you knew that there were no
unpaid notes to his discredit.

All about Ben Westerveld stretched the fruit of his toil; the work of
his hands. Orchards, fields, cattle, barns, silos. All these things were
dependent on him for their future well-being--on him and on Dike after
him. His days were full and running over. Much of the work was drudgery;
most of it was back-breaking and laborious. But it was his place. It was
his reason for being. And he felt that the reason was good, though he
never put that thought into words, mental or spoken. He only knew that
he was part of the great scheme of things and that he was functioning
ably. If he had expressed himself at all, he might have said:

"Well, I got my work cut out for me, an' I do it an' do it right."

There was a tractor now, of course; a phonograph with expensive records,
so that Caruso and McCormack and Elman were household words; a sturdy,
middle-class automobile, in which Bella lolled red-faced in a lacy and
beribboned boudoir cap when they drove into town. On a Saturday
afternoon you saw more boudoir caps skimming up and down the main street
in Commercial than you might see in a century of French farces.

As Ben Westerveld had prospered his shrewish wife had reaped her
benefits. Ben was not the selfish type of farmer who insists on
twentieth-century farm implements and medieval household equipment. He
had added a bedroom here, a cool summer kitchen there, an ice house, a
commodious porch, a washing machine, ev