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“Emma–I always wanted to tell you. God knows it was luck for you the way it turned out–but I always wanted to—-“

She took his hand again in her firm grip at that, and her kindly, bright brown eyes were on him. “I never held it against you, Ben. I had to live a long time to understand it. But I never held a grudge. It just wasn’t to be, I suppose. But listen to me, Ben. You do as I tell you. You go back to your wheat and your apples and your hogs. There isn’t a bigger man-size job in the world. It’s where you belong.”

Unconsciously his shoulders straightened again. Again they sagged. And so they parted, the two.

He must have walked almost all the long way home, through miles and miles of city streets. He must have lost his way, too, for when he looked up at a corner street sign it was an unfamiliar one.

So he floundered about, asked his way, was misdirected. He took the right streetcar at last and got off at his own corner at seven o’clock, or later. He was in for a scolding, he knew.

But when he came to his own doorway he knew that even his tardiness could not justify the bedlam of sound that came from within. High-pitched voices. Bella’s above all the rest, of course, but there was Minnie’s too, and Gus’s growl, and Pearlie’s treble, and the boy Ed’s and—-

At the other voice his hand trembled so that the knob rattled in the door, and he could not turn it. But finally he did turn it, and stumbled in, breathing hard. And that other voice was Dike’s.

He must have just arrived. The flurry of explanation was still in progress. Dike’s knapsack was still on his back, and his canteen at his hip, his helmet slung over his shoulder. A brown, hard, glowing Dike, strangely tall and handsome and older, too. Older.

All this Ben saw in less than one electric second. Then he had the boy’s two shoulders in his hands, and Dike was saying, “Hello, Pop.”

Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The others were taking up the explanation and going over it again and again, and marveling, and asking questions.

“He come in to–what’s that place, Dike?–Hoboken–yesterday only. An’ he sent a dispatch to the farm. Can’t you read our letters, Dike, that you didn’t know we was here now? And then he’s only got an hour more. They got to go to Camp Grant to be, now, demobilized. He came out to Minnie’s on a chance. Ain’t he big!”

But Dike and his father were looking at each other quietly. Then Dike spoke. His speech was not phlegmatic, as of old. He had a new clipped way of uttering his words:

“Say, Pop, you ought to see the way the Frenchies farm! They got about an acre each, and,
say, they use every inch of it. If they’s a little dirt blows into the crotch of a tree, they plant a crop in there. I never seen nothin’ like it. Say, we waste enough stuff over here to keep that whole country in food for a hundred years. Yessir. And tools! Outta the ark, believe me. If they ever saw our tractor, they’d think it was the Germans comin’ back. But they’re smart at that. I picked up a lot of new ideas over there. And you ought to see the old birds–womenfolks and men about eighty years old– runnin’ everything on the farm. They had to. I learned somethin’ off them about farmin’.”

“Forget the farm,” said Minnie.

“Yeh,” echoed Gus, “forget the farm stuff. I can get you a job here out at the works for four-fifty a day, and six when you learn it right.”

Dike looked from one to the other, alarm and unbelief on his face. “What d’you mean, a job? Who wants a job! What you all—-“