d earnest, and Rose's visits "home," as
she always called it, were naturally infrequent. By Christmas time, she
was receiving attentions from Frank Mall, Nellie's second son, a young
farmer of twenty-five.

To Mrs. Wade's everlasting credit, she never twitted Martin with this,
although she knew it from Rose's own lips, a month before he heard of
it through Bill. She was too grateful for their narrow escape to feel
vindictive and might have convinced herself they had merely endured a
bad nightmare if it had not been for the shiny Victrola; the sight of it
underscored the whole experience and she wished there were some way
to get rid of the thing, a wish that was echoed even more fervently by
Martin. In the evenings they would sit around the cleared supper table,
she doing odd jobs of mending, Martin reading, checking up the interest
dates on his mortgages or making entries in his account book, while Bill
at his books, would study to the accompaniment of record after record,
blissfully unconscious of what a thorn in the flesh he and his music
were to both his parents.

It was all so unpleasant. To Mrs. Wade it brought up pictures. And it
made Martin feel sheepish--the way he had felt that afternoon, decades
ago, as he sat in the bakery eating a chocolate ice-cream soda and
watching her walk across the Square. He would have told Bill to quit
playing it--more than once the sharp words were on his tongue--but
memories of the enthusiasm he had evinced the night he brought it home
kept him silent. He was afraid of what the boy might say, afraid he
might put two and two together, so he let it stay, although with his
usual caution he had arranged for a trial and would have felt justified
in packing it back as soon as the roads had permitted. Illogically, he
felt it was all Bill's fault that he must endure this annoyance.

That fall, the boy started to high school in Fallon, making the long
daily ride to and from town on horseback. He was a good pupil and the
hours he spent with his lessons were precious; they made the farm drift
away. To his mind, which was opening like a bud, it seemed that history
was the recorded romance of men who were everything but farmers. School
books told fascinating stories of conquerors, soldiers, inventors,
writers, engineers, kings, statesmen and orators. He would sit and dream
of the doers of great deeds. When he read of Alexander the Great, Bill
was he. He was Caesar and Napoleon, Washington and