I
Claude was to continue farming with his father, and after he
returned from his wedding journey, he fell at once to work. The
harvest was almost as abundant as that of the summer before, and
he was busy in the fields six days a week.
One afternoon in August he came home with his team, watered and
fed the horses in a leisurely way, and then entered his house by
the back door. Enid, he knew, would not be there. She had gone to
Frankfort to a meeting of the Anti-Saloon League. The Prohibition
party was bestirring itself in Nebraska that summer, confident of
voting the State dry the following year, which purpose it
triumphantly accomplished.
Enid's kitchen, full of the afternoon sun, glittered with new
paint, spotless linoleum, and blue-and-white cooking vessels. In
the dining-room the cloth was laid, and the table was neatly set
for one. Claude opened the icebox, where his supper was arranged
for him; a dish of canned salmon with a white sauce; hardboiled
eggs, peeled and lying in a nest of lettuce leaves; a bowl of
ripe tomatoes, a bit of cold rice pudding; cream and butter. He
placed these things on the table, cut some bread, and after
carelessly washing his face and hands, sat down to eat in his
working shirt. He propped the newspaper against a red glass water
pitcher and read the war news while he had his supper. He was
annoyed when he heard heavy footsteps coming around the house.
Leonard Dawson stuck his head in at the kitchen door, and Claude
rose quickly and reached for his hat; but Leonard came in,
uninvited, and sat down. His brown shirt was wet where his
suspenders gripped his shoulders, and his face, under a wide
straw hat which he did not remove, was unshaven and streaked with
dust.
"Go ahead and finish your supper," he cried. "Having a wife with
a car of her own is next thing to having no wife at all. How they
do like to roll around! I've been mighty blamed careful to see
that Susie never learned to drive a car. See here, Claude, how
soon do you figure you'll be able to let me have the thrasher? My
wheat will begin to sprout in the shock pretty soon. Do you
reckon your father would be willing to work on Sunday, if I
helped you, to let the machine off a day earlier?"
"I'm afraid not. Mother wouldn't like it. We never have done
that, even when we were crowded."
"Well, I think I'll go over and have a talk with your mother. If
she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe I could convince her
it's pretty near a case of your neighbour's ox falling into a pit
on the Sabbath day."
"That's a good idea. She's always reasonable."