In the last of the summer Grace was home again, having made several credits toward her master’s degree. She was energetic even in the heat, ready to help with the work, full of plans for improving the house. “Dear, dear,” Abbie said to herself, “Grace is so energetic, she is like the wind,—so active that she’s tiresome.”

It was during these weeks of activity that Grace decided to have an afternoon party for her mother,—some friends out from Cedartown and two or three from Lincoln,—women whom Abbie had met and enjoyed at Margaret’s and at Sarah Lutz’s. Abbie was pleased with the idea. It was kind of Grace to do this for her. “I suppose I would never get around to do it,” Abbie admitted to herself. “That’s one thing about Grace, she does get things accomplished.”

Abbie made out her list, and Grace looked it over preparatory to inviting the guests.

“Mother, you’re not going to have Christine Reinmueller?”

“Oh, yes, I am, Grace.” Abbie was sure of herself.

“Not with those Lincoln women. I wouldn’t care if it were just the Cedartown people. But not with those Lincoln women and especially not with Mrs. Wentworth. Whatever would she think of Christine?”

“I’m sure, Grace, I can’t help what Eloise’s mother would think of her!”

“I don’t see how you can be so friendly with Christine, anyway. She’s so Dutchy and so narrow and so ignorant.”

Abbie Deal set her mouth to keep it from trembling. Loyalty . . . it was the very fiber of her. In that swift flight of memory with which the human mind can make a non-stop journey across the years, she heard: “Hold-tight Get the ground up. You die already yet. Du narr! Ya . . . you like dat dyin’ . . . maybe.” She opened her eyes to the odor of steam, onions, hot water, flannels, to the sight of the homely red face of Christine by her bed, nodding,—jerking up,—nodding—

“Why, Grace!” Because she was so thoroughly agitated she said it mildly. “Why, Grace, she saved our lives . . . yours and mine. . . .”

“I realize it, Mother. I’ve heard all that a hundred times. But, heavens . . . is the debt never paid?”

To keep herself cool and poised and her lips from trembling, Abbie rose and started into the next room. In the doorway she turned.

“Never!” said Abbie Deal. “Never!”

CHAPTER XXVII

The same summer that Sarah Lutz went abroad with Emma, Abbie spent her spare time building the seat under the cedars. This was her sixty-sixth summer. She had almost finished her sawing and pounding on a warm August afternoon, when she looked up to see Sarah driving into the lane road in her electric car.

Abbie’s gray hair was stringing over her face,—perspiration on her forehead.

Sarah piloted the car, which she had dubbed Napoleon, up to the Lombardys, where Napoleon, with his usual caution, refused to climb a little rise in the ground. Sarah looked “dressy.” She had on a lavender summer silk, little amethysts in her ears.