self and I couldn't give up a girl like Virginia Thaine.
Understand, I have no quarrel with Jane Aydelot. Her property is
absolutely her own, not mine to crave and look forward to getting some
day."

"I understand," Horace Carey said, looking out toward the purple notches
now more clearly outlined against the sky. "How this country has changed
since that cold day when Mrs. Aydelot came almost to the old Crossing
after me. The sand dunes narrow and the river deepens a little every year.
The towns come and go on the prairies, but the homesteaders build better.
It is the farmer who really makes a new country habitable."

"That's what my mother said when I talked of coming West. But the real
test will come with the second generation. If it is loyal we will have
won. Here is the old Grass River trail that Jim and I followed many lonely
days. The valley is slowly coming out of the wilderness," Asher replied,
remembering his wife's words long before when she said: "The real story of
the plains is the story of the second generation. The real romance out
here will be Thaine Aydelot's romance."

They had reached the old trail that led to the Grass River settlement
now. It was still a new country where few trees, save some lone
cottonwoods, were as tall as a cabin, and nothing broke the view. But
groves had rooted, low windbreaks cut the country at frequent intervals;
many acres of sod had been turned by the plow, and many more were being
shut in by fences where the open cattle range was preempted by freeholds.
One bit of woodland, however, was beginning to dignify the valley. The
Aydelot grove spread over a hundred acres before the one-time sod
Sunflower Inn. The new home was on the swell now as Virginia had seen the
Colonial mansion of the mirage on the day she went seeking aid for the
grasshopper-beset neighborhood. But this was just a little cottage
waiting, like the grove, for years of time in which to grow a mansion
shaded with tall trees, with the lake and the woodland before it, and the
open prairie beyond.

Down at Jim Shirley's ranch the changes were many, for Jim had an artist's
eye. And the energy other settlers spent on the needs of wives and
children Jim spent on making his little dwelling attractive. He had
brought clover seed from Ohio, and had carefully sowed a fire guard around
his sod shack. Year by year the clover business increased; fire guard grew
to clover-lot, and clover-lot to little meadow. Then the li