“Why didn’t you have the gumption to get down?”

“Too bashful, I suppose. That’s where your ancient theories of child training come in. No modern child would stand it. But I just sat on while my legs went to sleep and my brain atrophied. I used to think I sat there a month. But I know now it couldn’t have been more than a week.”

“That’s as bad as I was.” It was John. “Remember that preacher that used to stop at our house, the one with the beard that looked as though it was made out of yellow rope?”

“Who could forget it? He tied it up like a horse’s tail when he ate.” They were all answering at once.

“The first time he stopped, he said to Mack, ‘What’s your name, son?’ Mack said, ‘Mackenzie.’ ‘And what’s yours, little man?’ he said to me. I was so scared I said ‘Mackenzie,’ too. Can you beat it? I’ll bet there isn’t a kid living to-day as bashful as that.”

“Do you remember,” it was Isabelle, “the old milk-wagon, John, you rigged up to peddle your milk in? I can smell the inside of it yet, the damp, sweetish odor of warm milk. Remember how you used to ring an old cow-bell and the women would come out with their pans and pitchers, and have their aprons twisted up over their heads? Think of the evil-looking germs that must have perched on the rims of those pitchers when the dust swirled around!”

And so they went on, recalling their childhood days,—days of sunburn and days of chilblains, of made-over clothes and corn-bread meals, of trudging behind plows or picking up potatoes, of work that was interwoven with fun, because youth was youth. Prairie children never forget.

Far into the evening they sat around the old coal burner, talking and laughing, with tears not far behind the laughter,—the state legislator and the banker, the artist, the singer, and the college teacher. And in their midst, rocking and smiling, sat the little old lady who had brought them up with a song upon her lips and a lantern in her hand.

CHAPTER XXXII

The Mackenzie Deals were leaving the morning after Christmas.

“Can’t you and Katherine stay longer?” Abbie asked Emma, a little wistfully.

“No, Granny,” Katherine assumed the responsibility for the decision. “I’ve had a grand time, but now I must go, for I have a date to-night,—and a blind one at that, . . . a Minnesota U. man.”

“ ‘A blind date.’ For goodness’ sake, Katherine, what is that?”

“Blind, Grandmother mine, means ‘not seeing.’ A date is a man with whom to while away a boresome hour or two. There, you have it . . . a man that you have never seen with whom to while away an hour or two.”

“Kathie . . . you mean you’ve never been introduced to him?”

“Not only never introduced to him . . . but have never set limpid violet eyes upon him.”