In the spring of ’87 the community was presented with the first issue of the Cedartown Headlight, a small sheet with growing pains. It contained a great many items pertaining to “the growth of our fair city.” It said that Mr. William Deal arrived in front of the editorial office in a fine new green lumber-wagon with red wheels, that on April fools’ day a cow of Mr. Oscar Lutz’s presented him with twin calves, that a box social was held in the G. A. R. hall, at which a good time was had by all. One gathered from an editorial that subscriptions could be paid with cobs, butchered beef and money, but that the greatest of these was money.

Crops continued to be good. Abbie thought that this coming summer of ’87 would prove to be the one in which she could go back home. And then, before she was ready, she knew she was to be a mother. With Isabelle, her youngest child, nearly ten, Abbie thought she could not face motherhood again,—not at forty-one.

“That means I wont go back to the academy, Mother,” Margaret told her. But Abbie said she would manage, that she had to manage somehow, for Margaret must finish.

In the fall, with Will protesting a little, Margaret and John both went to Weeping Water to school. And in November, Maggie O’Conner Mackenzie died, without having seen Abbie in twenty years. Bitterness came over Abbie with her grief. Why should life on the prairie have demanded so much of her? Why should twenty years have been so hard, so barren? By her condition, both her grief and her bitterness were accentuated.

At Christmas time, which was cold with deep snow, Margaret and John came home,—Margaret with her gray eyes luminous, her cheeks flushed with prairie-rose tints. She could not wait to tell her mother shyly that the young Fred Baker, who was a nephew of the minister, had been there again. He had only two more years in medical school and then he would be Doctor Fred Baker. He wanted her to write to him. And she liked him,—oh, how she liked him.

And Abbie wondered.

John, serious, quiet, “liked his work all right.” Of all the children, John was the hardest to understand. One almost had to read his mind to get anything out of him. Mack, too, was home for the day. He had graduated from the broom-and-dust-cloth and was on the books all the time. His round face, from which the freckles had miraculously disappeared, had taken on a more alert look, his round china-blue eyes a keener expression.

Isabelle played and sang for them, “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” and “Bonny Charlie’s Now Awa’,” her childish voice soaring forth lustily, her slim little legs pumping vigorously.

Abbie was thankful the children were all doing so well.

Christmas over, Mack left for Omaha, and after New Year, Margaret and John went back to the academy. Elsa Reinmueller came over three mornings in the week to help.