When Abbie left the room, Margaret did not even look up. She was sorting the tubes in the little box, touching them lovingly as one would touch jewels.

When Mack was seventeen, he went to Omaha with his father and came back changed. He was through with farm life and he didn’t care who knew it. Will said he’d better settle down and get to work and Mack said no, he wanted to get a job in Omaha. Will said it was a boy’s fool notion and Mack said it was nothing of the kind, that he was almost eighteen and he knew what he wanted. Never did Abbie feel so helpless to handle a situation, so uncertain what to say or do.

“He doesn’t want to sweat,” Will told her with sarcasm. “He wants to wear a white collar.”

“What do you want to do up there?” Abbie was trying to keep the conversation peaceful.

“Oh, I don’t know just what. Get in somewhere and work up.”

“Get in somewhere . . . but where . . . and what?” Will had no patience with the wild scheme.

“Anything that’s where there’s business and a big town . . . anything but the farm.”

And Will had said that the Deals had always been for the land.

Abbie stood between them for days. “Oh, Will, don’t you see? The farm is distasteful to Mack.”

“A farm has been good enough for smarter men than Mack.”

“We don’t all want to do the same thing, and Will, you said you couldn’t do anything just working for your father. You’ve always been so understanding. Then try to understand Mack.”

Abbie talked and prayed. “Oh, God, it’s such little things we need help in,—such every day affairs.” She saw Will’s disappointment and she saw Mack’s ambitions. Torn between the two, she could only smooth matters over for both.

“Let him go, then,” Will said suddenly, as one who could no longer hold to his point. “But I wish to God, Margaret and Isabelle had been boys. Maybe we could get something done around here then.” He slammed the kitchen door and went down to the barn. Abbie, fighting back the tears, told herself that he didn’t mean it. Will loved his girls,—and he didn’t mean it.

By fall Mack had a job in an Omaha bank. Henry Lutz knew one of the officers well, and it was through him that Mack landed the work which consisted in part of sweeping and dusting, but which “beat plowing corn all to pieces,” according to the wielder of the broom and duster.

Abbie had thought she could not stand it to see Mack leave home. All day long she had sewed shirts and mended socks for him,—and all night she had stared into the dark with the worry of her boy going to the city. But with the arrival of his letters, some of her anxiety vanished. When at Christmas time he came home to spend the day, he was full of “bank talk.” One would have gathered from his conversation that he was at least on the board of directors.