Will brought back corn meal and one precious sack of white flour for which he had paid ten dollars. So sparing was Abbie in its use, that it was nearly spring when the last bit was baked and the sack made into an apron for herself.

It was in the middle of the first night in March that Abbie knew her hour had come. The March winds, like so many wild March hares, were running past the little soddie. Will dressed hurriedly, replenished the fire, and with a word of encouragement, was gone into the night. Abbie, bolting the door behind him, knew the greatest fear of all for prairie women,—to be alone on the desert of grass with the pangs of childbirth upon her. “Oh, God, bring Will and the doctor safe home.” The winds blew. Little Mack slept. Abbie’s body was wracked. “Oh, God, send some one.”

And then some one pounded on the door: “Ein! . . . Las mich ein . . . Christine.” Abbie opened the door, and Christine Reinmueller came in, her fat face red from the cold wind, her little tight greasy braids flattened from ear to ear. She looked beautiful to Abbie.

It was hours before Will came with the doctor from Weeping Water. And then Abbie had her little girl,—the little daughter who was to wear pearls and all the lovely things that should go with them. Will brought Mack in and showed him the new sister, and Mack promptly welcomed her by poking a fat forefinger into her eye and mouth to see if she really worked.

They named her Margaret,—for both grandmothers. “It will please them both,” Abbie fibbed politely. Almost she could hear Grandma Deal saying: “What did they do that fool thing for?”

Mackenzie Deal and Margaret Deal! A son and a daughter! Such a big family! She and Will laughed together in their relief and happiness.

And now, Abbie’s love was divided between two babies. No, that is not true. There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.

March was cold, windy, snow-filled,—the land a desolate waste. Grayish-white snow over the low rolling hills,—a grayish-white sky like the pale reflection of those rolling hills in an opaque glass! And into the gray vastness of the sky, three little thin lines of smoke from the stove-pipes through the roofs of a dugout, a chink-battened frame and a soddie,—incense ascending to the God of Homes!

And then, the miracle! Spring came over the prairie,—not softly, shyly, but in great magic strides. It was in the flush of green on the elders and willows by Stove Creek. It was in the wind,—in the smell of loam and grasses, in the tantalizing odor of wild plums budding and wild violets flowering. Nature, the alchemist, took them all, the faint odors of the loam and the grasses, the willow buds and the little wild flowers, and mixing them in her mortar, threw them over the prairie on the wings of the wind.