the kitchen. August always washed his hands and face there, at the sink, in the granite basin, instead of in the bath-room; and he kept an old pinkish comb and his shaving-things on the shelf above the sink. They used their old dishes and ate from the oilcloth.

'They had arranged to get their cream and eggs from the farm, but they found that it was very different from having those things right at hand in abundance. Emma said that she had to learn to cook all over again. They were sparing of milk and butter when they had to pay for these things in cash. They got several quarters of meat when Carl butchered, and Emma put it up in jars, as she had always done. But somehow, when they were so near town, they found themselves getting more fresh meat. Then Emma canned quarts and quarts of vegetables. The cellar was full. They could not use half the things. They could n't have chickens because they might dig up the lawn, which was freshly seeded. August had let Carl keep the old car and had bought a new sedan. They drove a little more now, oftener to Wapsie and to Dubuque, where they got into the habit of doing their important shopping, like most Richland people. But August used the car chiefly for going back and forth to the farm. He would n't let Marguerite drive it, and of course Emma never thought of doing so. They still did little pleasure-driving. They took out the minister and his wife for a drive, went two or three times to Turkey Creek. In the hot summer evenings the car was locked in the garage, although they might have been out getting the freshness from the open fields, where ghostly vapor rose from the corn-fields, and the trees

looked misty and drenched in the loneliness of evening.

They got considerable consolation from the church. from the church. Now they were

among the chief and faithful members. If the Kaetterhenrys were not in their pew, the minister knew that something was wrong with them, and took pains to call the next week. They were among the eight or nine who attended the prayer-meetings. Emma had a kind of fondness and loyalty for the church because of her father, and August remembered it as the best thing in his young days. Going to church, and being steady and a good worker, and not drinking, and paying his bills, and saving money, were all part of the same thing. August and Emma still attended the Hon. Mr. Bossingham's Bible class, where August sat dumb and Emma occasionally made a timid answer. They never said much at church meetings, but they could always be counted upon to be there. After the evangelist had been to Richland,—a modern evangelist who had a singer who shouted, "Now put a little pep into these hymns, people," not like the old traveling evangelists who used to go around to the camp-meetings,-they offered the use of their house for one of the cottage prayer-meetings that were held for as long as a month before they petered out.

But although the church was still a social and business center in a little country town like Richland, one doctor attending the Methodist church, the other the Congregational, it did n't seem to have the importance that it had had when they were young people in the country here. The children. did n't make the effort to come in to services that they had made, easy as

it was for them now, compared with those old days of buggies and dirt roads. There were too many other places where people could go now. August and Emma made Marguerite go to church and Sunday-school, but after the league she went walking, on pleasant nights, with her current admirer.

And, really, it was only as a kind of deep-rooted custom, a bulwark against worrying changes, an idea, that August cared for the church. He often went to sleep during the services. He did not get the sentimental and emotional satisfaction out of the prayers and sermons and hymns that Emma did. It did not fill the same place in his life. He had never questioned anything, but it was doubtful what these things really meant to him.

Emma was getting used to town. As the children said, she liked it better now that they were in their own house. She was still very quiet, but she was beginning to go about a little more than formerly. Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Henry Stille, "got her into" the Social Circle Club, a collection of elderly ladies who met every Tuesday to eat and talk. They had no program, like the Tourist Club, took up no "line of study." The club was only and frankly for social purposes. "The

Banner" said of it:

"The Social Circle Club held its weekly meeting on Tuesday last at the pleasant new residence of Mrs. August Kaetterhenry. The ladies brought fancy-work, and after a pleasant hour spent in social intercourse were served with a delicious luncheon by the hostess, after which the club adjourned, thanking the hostess one and all for a delightful afternoon's entertainment."

Then there was the Aid Society. This, too, was composed largely of the older women of the church, who were still willing to get up big suppers, work at cleaning the church, make sheets and pillow-cases for the missions that they supported, and raise money for the parsonage fund by making quilts which women from Wapsie came down to buy. Emma enjoyed these quilting afternoons in the quiet, chilly church basement, to which she went with Mrs. Willie Stille, with all the women sitting about in old-fashioned comfort, talking over neighborhood affairs, telling what their husbands and children had done, as they worked together at the big quiltingframe. It was like her girlhood days, when she was getting ready to be married, and they had held quilting bees in the country. bees in the country. There was the crisp smell of coffee, which some of the ladies were getting ready on the oilstove, coming in and saying, “Well, don't you ladies think you better quit working so hard and have a little coffee for a change?" She helped at the church suppers, was one of those who could be counted upon to work in the kitchen. But it was noticed that the Kaetterhenrys were always careful not to donate too much.

Emma still had the feeling that August must n't be kept waiting a minute for his meals and that she "must be getting back."

She took more pains with the house than she had ever taken with the one in the country. It was all so bright and shining, and she wanted to keep it that way. Marguerite, of course, did n't get things out of order as the boys had done. Emma raised plants, geraniums and colored foliage, and a sword fern for the front window that

she hoped would grow huge, like Mrs. Henry Stille's. She did more sewing than she had done before. She used to count on Mary for that, but Mary had less time than she did now. Emma made Marguerite's clothes, under minute and fretful and exacting directions. "No, Mama, I told you I had to have the belt down lower. This makes me look like Lottie." She got patterns from other women and crocheted wide, elaborate yokes for Marguerite's corset-covers and camisoles.

She took care of the grandchildren when the young people wanted to go somewhere. She went out into the country to help out when there was sickness at the homes of any of the children. She missed the farm sometimes-missed the quiet, her work with the poultry, the feeling of the old rooms, the country air and sounds. But she kept busy enough.

August was the one who felt that he had nothing to do. The house was finished now. Life moved along, and Life moved along, and what else was there to do? He was taking it easy now. He made a kind of religion of the garden and the lawn. He looked forward to the meetings of the stockholders of the Farmers' Bank, in which he had an interest. He made a rite of going downtown for the mail and the meat. But all this meant nothing.

There was no club for him. For some obscure reasons he "did n't believe in lodges." He paid his subscription to the church, and that was the end of it. He read the Richland "Banner" and a Dubuque paper and a farm journal. He cared for nothing else. There was no library in Richland, no place where magazines were sold, but he would not have patronized such places if he had had

them, although Emma might have done so.

He did n't come right home when he went down for the mail. He got into the habit of hanging around with the other retired farmers, in at Dawson's store or at the post-office. Not at the barber-shop. The "tougher element" hung out there, and at the restaurant, which had a pool hall in connection. The men talked a little about politics, but mostly about farms changing hands, and crops and roads, with minute observations on the weather.

"Well, that was just about a frost we had last night."

"Yeh. Little too windy for a frost." "My wife thought some of her plants had been frosted."

"No. Was n't quite a frost. Our plants did n't show any sign of it." Most of them had a kind of seedy look. They walked heavily, without spring. They did n't know what to do with themselves.

People said; "Have you noticed how old Mr. Kaetterhenry's getting to look? He don't seem like the same man he did when they first moved into town. I wonder if he can be well." He was n't very well. He had headaches, trouble with his stomach, once a dizzy spell. He was eating the same heavy meals that he had eaten when he was working hard on the farm, coffee and meat three times a day. August thought he had to have his meat.

It was true that all at once he was beginning to show his age. Emma looked no older now than he did. She had gained flesh again since her operation, and some of the lines had gone from her face. August, when he decided to retire, had been a hearty,

vigorous man seemingly in the prime of life. But now all at once his old color was gone, his shoulders were slack, his vigorously bright curling hair was sparse and faded, and he walked like a man ten years older. He actually looked older than Herman Klaus, who had always been a little dried-up fellow. August had never had anything the matter with him except when he had lost two fingers from his left hand in the corn-shredder. But now he began buying a patent tonic at the drug-store, and he and Emma both took it.

Emma said that she believed half the trouble was that August had nothing to keep him busy any more. He He did a little hauling. There was a job vacant in the lumber-yard. He would have liked to take it, at seventy dollars a month, but his old stubbornness kept him from it. He had said that he wanted to quit work. Actually he would have been glad at times to work on the roads or the section. But no work was vital any more. No work looked forward to anything. He did not want some one else for his boss. Everything that he had done had been for the farm. The farm had always come first. He had always talked about retiring some day, quit this slaving; but he had never really looked forward to it. He had used every He had used every energy to build up the farm. He had done it, from almost nothing, by his own efforts, and now that he had made a fine place of it, Carl was living on it and he had moved to town. Well, that was what everybody did. He would not have wanted to be like Herman, not able to do it.

The boys had speculated upon whether pa would be able to stay away from the farm. They were n't sur

prised to see him going out there. He made excuses at first. When he got the new sedan, he drove out just to see what Carl was doing. Then he said, "Want me to help you some with that plowing?" Then he began to go regularly, except when the weather was too bad and he was forced to hang about the house, looking at the farm journal and trying to take a nap.

He and Emma had always thought of taking a trip, but it seemed now that neither of them really wanted to go.

The farm looked different now, more so as time went on. When August and Emma sometimes drove out there for Sunday dinner, it gave them a kind of shock when they turned into the drive. The place was theirs, and yet it was not. The house was different. Carl and Clara were getting new furniture. They used grandpa's old room for a storeroom. They did n't like the upstairs, which was not well finished. They had a brass bed and a shiny mailorder dresser in the down-stairs bedroom, which was full of the baby's things, thrown around everywhere. They had a new bright-colored rug in the parlor, where there was none of the old furniture except the organ, which Marguerite had refused to have moved into town. Clara said she did n't know why they kept it there, since neither of them could play a note. She wanted a victrola if crops were good this year. Carl had made a little cage for the baby, like one that they had seen in a store window in Dubuque. They let him play there on the new parlor rug, with all his celluloid animals and the little doll like one of the characters in the funny papers. None of Emma's children had ever been permitted to be in the parlor.