Grandma was provoked. “You ain’t got no call to be scarin’ me that way,” she sputtered. “You ain’t got no call to spend your life jokin’.”

“Oh, come, now, Ma. Better to laugh than to cry. Will maybe’ll be remorse-stricken all the days o’ his life,—to hear the brayin’ in his conscience of them poor, helpless, skinny, mouse-colored government mules.”

When Abbie was starting for school, Grandpa casually followed her out. “Had a good visit with Will.” He cocked one eye up at the well-sweep.

“Did you?”

“Yep. He wanted to know how all the Iowa folks was.”

“Did he?”

“Yep. More specifically, he wanted to know how all the Blackhawk folks was.”

“Did he?”

“Yep. Collectively, he wanted to know how all the folks in our community was.”

“Did he?”

“Yep. Individually, he wanted to know how you was.”

“Oh, . . . did he?”

“Yep. He says to me,” . . . Grandpa carelessly picked up a handful of snow and threw it at a rooster. “If I can rec’lect his words exact, they was, ‘How’s my Abbie-girl’?”

Abbie walked over the crusted snow in a maze of conflicting emotions,—behind the hard little stays of her waist a burning letter from Ed Matthews and plans for her future,—in her heart, the memory of Will Deal’s one kiss, more poignant than either.

A new minister and his wife came to the growing town that fall and made a round of calls among the country folk. They were Vermont people. The Reverend Ezra Whitman was dignified, pompous, a little pedantic. Mrs. Whitman was refined, soft-spoken, a graduate of a girls’ seminary. She took a great interest in Abbie, so that the young teacher began going into town to see her. She found that Mrs. Whitman was something of an artist. The little new frame house in which the couple lived held several oil paintings that seemed the acme of art to Abbie, and there was always an unfinished canvas on an easel. The paints fascinated the girl. She longed to get her hands on them. Something in her eyes must have flashed its unspoken message, for one day Mrs. Whitman asked her if she would like to try her hand with the brush. It thrilled her beyond words. Crudely enough, but with some intuitive knowledge, she did a little clump of trees on a piece of waste canvas.

“I’ll never be satisfied until I can do it well,” she said. From that time on, at Mrs. Whitman’s invitation, she began painting with her, riding over to town when she could, tramping the two and one-half miles through slush or mud when there was no other way to go.

“It’s your voice, though, that shows the greater promise,” Mrs. Whitman told her. “I wish I could help you with that, too. Mr. Whitman’s sister will know what to tell you when she comes. She teaches voice in my old seminary.”

And when the sister came, and heard Abbie, she was enthusiastic. “It’s good,” she told them all. “It’s more than good. It’s splendid. You can do really big things with it. You must try sometime to come East for lessons.”