Isn’t motherhood, itself, an accomplishment?

She knew that she made her own answer, and yet it gave her a sense of satisfaction and peace. Will might have said it. It sounded like him.

“But I’ve made so many mistakes. . . . Will. . . . even in that.”

You are a good mother, Abbie-girl.

Yes, it gave her a sense of peace and comfort.

CHAPTER XXIV

It seemed to Abbie that the years began to move more quickly now. The leaves of the almanac over the wooden kitchen sink were turned with almost unbelievable rapidity. Abbie never tore them out and never destroyed one of these outlived chronicles of time.

“Don’t you ever burn up any of the old things that have accumulated?” Isabelle asked when she was home from the University.

“Oh, no,” Abbie said hastily.

“Why not?”

“Oh . . . I don’t know. Some one might need them sometime. I’ve always found a use for everything.” And so every button, every string, every paper sack was carefully hoarded.

Isabelle was in the second semester of her sophomore year. She had only two dresses,—her brown school dress and her tan Sunday one, but she had a knack of wearing them well. It was the Era of Throttled Throats. Isabelle would pin a long ribbon at the front of her neck, wrap it tightly several times around that maltreated part of her anatomy and tie it in a huge bow under her ear.

“It’s a wonder it doesn’t shut off your epiglottis or whatever it is you sing with,” Abbie said in disgust.

Isabelle was attractive with her reddish-brown hair and eyes and her mellow voice,—attractive apparently to Harrison Rhodes, a young man who sang in the same choir with her. When he had been out to the farm and sung “Whispering Hope,” with Isabelle, looking down at her while she played the accompaniment, Abbie thought that all who ran could read, and the language of the message was in that Esperanto, the universal language of romance.

“But then I’m sort of romantic, Will, and maybe I just imagine it.”

I thought so, too, Abbie.

In June of that year a national political convention named a Nebraska man for its presidential candidate. He was defeated in November, but Abbie said, “At least they know now there are some states west of the Mississippi.”

Letters came from John regularly and Abbie thought to herself, with no small amount of glee, that John was far more communicative through the medium of pen and paper than when he was with her. His firm was “getting along pretty well,” although he himself was not doing much more than the collections and looking up references. He would be glad when he had a real case. Later he had joined the local unit of National Guards. They met and drilled right along. Rather foolish, maybe, when there was no likelihood of war, but it was good for them, as they were mostly fellows in offices. His foot bothered him yet sometimes,—a little stiff after he had drilled.