ed along for all of us from one year to another in
the slow movement of a new country in hard times: only I was at bottom
better off than most of my neighbors because I had cattle, though I
could not see how they then did me much good. They grew in numbers, and
keeping them was just a matter of labor. My stock was the only thing I
had except land which was almost worthless; for I could use the land of
others for pasture and hay without paying rent.

Town life went backward in most ways. My interest in it centered in
Virginia and through her in Elder Thorndyke's family; but of this family
I saw little except for my visits from Grandma Thorndyke. She came out
and red up the house as often as she could catch a ride, and I kept up
my now well-known secret policy of supplying the Thorndyke family with
my farm, dairy and poultry surplus. Why not? I lay in bed of nights
thinking that Virginia had been that day fed on what I grew, and in the
morning would eat buckwheat cakes from grain that I worked to grow,
flour from my wheat that I had taken to mill, spread with butter which I
had made with my own hands, from the cows she used to pet and that had
hauled her in my wagon back along the Ridge Road, and with nice sorghum
molasses from cane that I had grown and hauled to the sorghum mill. That
she would have meat that I had prepared for her, with eggs from the
descendants of the very hens to which she had fed our table scraps when
we were together. That maybe she would think of me when she made bread
for Grandma Thorndyke from my flour. It was sometimes almost like being
married to Virginia, this feeling of standing between her and hunger.
The very roses in her cheeks, and the curves in her developing form,
seemed of my making. But she never came with grandma to help red up.

2

Grandma often told me that now I was getting pretty nearly old enough to
be married, or would be when I was twenty-one, which would be in
July--"Though," she always said, "I don't believe in folks's being
married under the spell of puppy love. Thirty is soon enough; but yet,
you might do well to marry when you are a little younger, because you
need a wife to keep you clean and tidy, and you can support a wife." She
began bringing girls with her to help fix my house up; and she would
always show them the castor and my other things.

"Dat bane for Christina," said Magnus one time, when she was showing my
castor and a nice white china dinner set, to Kitti