Margaret’s school year was a wonderful experience. There were thirty tuition pupils, about half from the town of Weeping Water and half from farm homes. The minister, in whose family Margaret stayed, had a nephew who was studying to be a doctor, and who had come to visit his uncle. “His name is Fred Baker and I wish you could know him, Mother,” Margaret reported. “You never in your life saw such a fine young man.”

Abbie wondered.

In July of ’86, the railroad was finished through to Lincoln. And now, Cedartown would no longer sit out on the prairie by herself. No longer would twenty-three miles of snow drifts or deep ruts of mud lie between her and the capital city. Cedartown residents held their heads a little higher, spoke largely of “train-time” and “making connections for Omaha.” Already the stones were in place for the foundation of the station. A train each way every day, mail in a sack being thrown carelessly out of a baggage-car instead of from a pony’s back, a telegraph machine clicking noisily in a three-roomed station. What more metropolitan atmosphere could one desire?

The day that the first train came through was a gala one. Word had been wafted about by some occult means that any one who wanted to do so could ride to the end of the line free of charge. The entire Cedartown population, including two puppies and a cat, was on hand to pile hilariously into the box-cars and ride to the end of the road. Old Asy Drumm took his hammer and his saw and his tobacco, and drove over to the track with the Deals, as he had just finished building another room to the rear of the house. Upon their return from the free railroad trip, Abbie and Margaret began painting the pine woodwork in the new kitchen. Margaret, since her year in the academy, was a little fussy about the way things looked.

Abbie’s plans for going back home that summer had gone into nothing on account of the new kitchen and the fact that she realized more and more that, because Isabelle was the musical one of the family, she must have an organ.

The Lutzes were getting Emma a fine new piano, so Will bought their second-hand reed-organ. On Isabelle’s ninth birthday he brought it home in the lumber-wagon. Isabelle was beside herself with excitement. Her little legs pumped furiously up and down to get air into the creature’s cloth lungs and her little, slender, tapering fingers ran nimbly over the keys.

Abbie, herself, sat down and tried to pick out a few chords of an old song, but her fingers were stiff and clumsy.

“By George, you’re the one that ought to take lessons,” Will said suddenly, “the way you always wanted . . .”

“No . . .” Abbie got up from the whirling carpet-covered stool. “No.” Her lips trembled a little so that she did not look up. “At forty it’s too late.”