Emma was back at her social activities soon after the baby’s advent, much to Abbie’s uneasiness. “Emma certainly takes her duties lightly,” Abbie would say to Margaret, who was her confidant in all the daughter-in-law gossip. “She and Eloise ought to be shaken up in a hat. Emma is too easy about it all for any use, and Eloise makes such hard work of it, that it’s painful to see her.”

Near the close of her University course, Grace came home one Friday evening, ate supper with her mother and wiped the dishes for her, remarking quite casually, “Mother, Wilber Johnson, the engineering student I told you about, asked me to marry him.”

Abbie, who was cutting bacon in readiness for breakfast, nearly cut a finger in her surprise and excitement.

“Why, Grace . . . and you’ve kept it from Mother two hours . . . you rascal! Well, he’s a nice boy, I’m sure. I knew his father and mother years ago and better people never lived. She came as a bride to the half-section across the creek from us . . . where Fritz Reinmueller lives now. She could hardly help but have a fine son. Well . . . well . . . my baby! I can’t think, Grace, that you’re twenty and old enough to know your own mind. How soon the years go by. . . . It’s the right way, though, and the natural one. . . . I’ll be glad to see you. . . .”

“Goodness, Mother, stop and listen. . . . I’m not going to marry him.”

“You’re not?”

“Why, of course not. I didn’t say so. I just said he asked me to. I wouldn’t think of it.”

“Then you don’t love him?”

“Of course not.”

“That is a joke on me . . . going on that way. He’s such a nice boy and his folks are so nice and well fixed. I guess I never gave it a thought but that you meant you wanted to marry him.”

“Well, I don’t. I don’t feel a bit like it.”

“That’s all right, dearie. I know just how you feel. He isn’t the one, is he? But you just wait. There will be some one,—and then you can wear the pearls I’ve been keeping all this time for one of my girls to wear. I’m glad you know your own mind. Lots of girls don’t. They just marry the first man that asks them. But you’re a strong character, Grace, and I’m glad of it. One of these days the right one will come along. I’ve got a little poem in my scrap book that says:

“Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me;

No wind can drive my bark astray,

Nor change the tide of destiny.

The stars come nightly to the skies.

The tidal wave unto the sea,

Nor time, nor space, nor deep nor high

Can keep my own away from me.