“I have many . . . my little girlhood days when Chicago was a village . . . the three weeks’ journey from Illinois into Iowa . . . the fun in the Big Woods behind my sister Janet’s house. I can shut my eyes and smell the dampness and the Mayflowers there. The old log school and then the new white one with green shutters . . . my wedding . . . the trip from Iowa into Nebraska. . . . There are many memories. But I’ll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It’s just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five . . . and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor. Will, your grandfather, is coming in to supper . . . and the children are all playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn’t much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is. The supper cooking . . . the table set for the whole family . . . the afternoon sun across the floor . . . the robins singing in the cottonwoods . . . the children’s merry voices . . . Will coming in . . . eventide.”

“I think it’s a nice memory, Grandma, but something about the way you say it makes me sad.”

“But it’s not sad, Laura. My memories are not sad. They’re pleasant. I’m happy when I’m living them over. You’ll find out when you get old, Laura, that some of the realities seem dreams . . . but the dreams, Laura, . . . the dreams are all real.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

That summer,—the one in which Abbie Deal was eighty,—was the summer of the Great Harvest.

Nebraska was favored of the gods. Ceres’ throne was in Nebraska. It was as though she chose the state from all others upon which to lavish her goods,—as though the bulk of her fortune had been given to a favorite child. From the old Missouri to the foot of the sand-hills,—from the Kansas border to the land of the Dakotas, the wheat fields, like the sun’s reflection, lay ripe under the July sky. In every direction one saw a thrasher belching out its yellow breath of wheat straw.

The fields were springs from which never-ending brooklets of yellow wheat, pouring into the thrashers, rolled forth in golden streams to form a mighty river of grain.