Through what agency came the consolation she could not say, but she felt able to keep in touch with him. There was nothing of the weird about it,—no foolish incantations to the dead. He just seemed with her. It grew in time to give her a slight sense of peace. It took from the separation the raw, tearing hurt. They had been so close, so companionable, that she seemed always to know what he would have said or done under any conditions. She grew to imagine she was talking to him,—telling him the small inconsequential affairs of the household, just as she had always done. And he seemed to answer.

“We had the Lutzes out for supper, Will.”

That was pleasant, Abbie.

She knew that she made her own answers, but paradoxically, they seemed not to be. She had known Will’s opinions so thoroughly that, almost without her volition, the answers sprang to her mind.

“The Reinmuellers were quarreling to-day, Will. You know, Will, sometimes I think you and I are nearer even now than Gus and Christine.”

That’s true, Abbie.

“I shall never tell any one,” she said to herself. “I know just how they would feel. They would look at me queerly and think I was ‘touched.’ You do talk to me, Will, don’t you?”

Why, of course, Abbie-girl.

And so, like an unseen presence, it came to give her a sense of comfort, until the day on which there would come a reaction, and she would plunge into a dark state of depression during which she would turn upon herself with accusations of a childish belief in her own fragile imagination. And then, in time,—something would quiet her again. Something,—she did not know what,—the wind in the Lombardy poplars,—the spirit of the deepening prairie twilight,—the stillness of the star-filled summer night,—or the memory of a voice saying, “I would go on with you . . . remembering . . .”

The greatest antidote in the world for grief is work, and the necessity of work. And Abbie had more to do than she had ever done in her busy life.

John was the one upon whom she most depended. All the winter, after his father’s death, he had looked after the stock and all spring he had worked faithfully putting in the new crop. Many times one of the Reinmuellers had helped out, but John had shouldered the greater share of the field work. His presence was the only solution now to the problem of making a living on the place. He was only eighteen, but in the years to come, if he wanted to marry, Abbie told herself that he could have a small house built near by,—or perhaps it would be better the other way around,—she and Isabelle and Grace could live in the small cottage and let John have the bigger house. John was so much like his father, quiet, faithful, uncomplaining. He had none of Mack’s friendliness toward every one, but a reserve which was close to dignity. Every night, all winter, after the chores were done, he had cleaned up and with no explanation, mounted the enclosed stairs to his own room. What did he do there, Abbie wondered, as she built up the fire, so that the room above, heated by a “drum” on the stove-pipe, would be warm enough.