“Oh, but I wasn’t here, John. That was almost a whole year before we came. I’ve only been here fifty-nine years.”

“Fifty-nine years is quite a while, Mother, and you’re getting to be one of the few left, who came that long ago. They want you to make a little talk.”

“But what can you say in a few words, John, that will cover fifty-nine years? I guess ‘Behold what God hath wrought,’ is the most condensed statement I can think of.”

And then it turned out that there were to be two big events for Abbie Deal in July. Katherine’s wedding, which was to have been in the fall, was suddenly set for the twentieth. John was sending Jimmie Buchanan east on business, and in spite of the off-season time of year, the wedding was to take place so that Katherine could go with him. Already Katherine was being dined and fêted and showered by the friends who were still in town. Sarah Lutz was in California and was not coming back. “So you must be careful and not get sick, Granny,” Katherine told her, “or we wouldn’t have either of you at the big doings.” She and her mother had driven down one afternoon to see Abbie. They brought her a lavender silk dress and a real lace cape-collar which Emma had bought in Vienna.

“You must be all dolled up, Granny,” Katherine told her. “You must be massaged and manicured and you ought to have a permanent. I believe you would take a lovely one.” She bent low over her grandmother’s head and examined a strand of snow-white hair. “It looks as though it might have had a bit of natural curl in it once.”

Oh, why couldn’t they know? Why did an old woman seem always to have been old? Abbie was back on the knoll near the Big Woods, singing . . . her head thrown back . . . her thick hair curling and rippling over her creamy white shoulders. Why couldn’t they understand that once she had kept tryst with Youth? Why didn’t they realize that some day, they, too, must hold rendezvous with Age?

“Yes,” said old Abbie Deal, simply, “it used to be quite curly.”

It was just before they left, that Abbie said, “I have two presents for you, Kathie.”

“Two, Granny? How lovely! Why two?”

“Well, one I am making myself so that you will always have something of Grandma’s hand work. The other . . . the other, Kathie, is an heirloom, a string of little pearls. I want you not to plan for anything else for your neck. They’re beautiful. Even you, with all your nice things, will be proud to own them.”

“Fine . . . Granny! Fine!” Even so, it was said half carelessly. Things had come so easily to Kathie.

In the next two weeks, Abbie worked hard to finish the pink and white quilt with its rose-shaped blocks rambling up the borders. On the nineteenth, Grace came from summer school where she was teaching, and left immediately for Omaha in her roadster, as she had some shopping to do before the wedding. Early on the morning of the twentieth, Christine Reinmueller came over to receive her instructions from Abbie for caring for the place. The chickens were to be fed. Abbie gave minute directions for the ceremony,—the laying hens in the chicken-yard, whole corn out of one box,—the fries so-and-so out of a certain can. If it looked like rain, Christine was to turn the water-spout into the cistern. But if it rained too long, it ought to be turned out before it started to run over. And Christine was to pick the sweet-peas and nasturtiums.