she, too, suspected a joke. She had
learned that humour might wear almost any guise.

When Claude started for the barn after breakfast, she came
running down the path, calling to him faintly,--hurrying always
made her short of breath. Overtaking him, she looked up with
solicitude, shading her eyes with her delicately formed hand. "If
you want I should do up your linen coat, Claude, I can iron it
while you're hitching," she said wistfully.

Claude stood kicking at a bunch of mottled feathers that had once
been a young chicken. His shoulders were drawn high, his mother
saw, and his figure suggested energy and determined self-control.

"You needn't mind, mother." He spoke rapidly, muttering his
words. "I'd better wear my old clothes if I have to take the
hides. They're greasy, and in the sun they'll smell worse than
fertilizer."

"The men can handle the hides, I should think. Wouldn't you feel
better in town to be dressed?" She was still blinking up at him.

"Don't bother about it. Put me out a clean coloured shirt, if you
want to. That's all right."

He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the
path up to the house. She was so plucky and so stooped, his dear
mother! He guessed if she could stand having these men about,
could cook and wash for them, he could drive them to town!

Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca
coat and went off in the rattling buckboard in which, though he
kept two automobiles, he still drove about the country. He said
nothing to his wife; it was her business to guess whether or not
he would be home for dinner. She and Mahailey could have a good
time scrubbing and sweeping all day, with no men around to bother
them.

There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off
somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a
meeting of the Farmers' Telephone directors;--to see how his
neighbours were getting on with their work, if there was nothing
else to look after. He preferred his buckboard to a car because
it was light, went easily over heavy or rough roads, and was so
rickety that he never felt he must suggest his wife's
accompanying him. Besides he could see the country better when he
didn't have to keep his mind on the road. He had come to this
part of Nebraska when the Indians and the buffalo were still
about, remembered the grasshopper year and the big cyclone, had
watched the farms emerge one by one from the great