So, at eighteen, it had been Midwest University for Dirk. It was a much more economical plan than would have resulted from the choice of an eastern college. High Prairie heard that Dirk DeJong was going away to college. A neighbour’s son said, “Going to Wisconsin? Agricultural course there?”
“My gosh, no!” Dirk had answered. He told this to Selina, laughing. But she had not laughed.
“I’d like to take that course myself, if you must know. They say it’s wonderful.” She looked at him, suddenly. “Dirk, you wouldn’t like to take it, would you? To go to Madison, I mean. Is that what you’d like?”
He stared. “Me! No! . . . Unless you want me to, Mother. Then I would, gladly. I hate your working like this, on the farm, while I go off to school. It makes me feel kind of rotten, having my mother working for me. The other fellows——”
“I’m doing the work I’m interested in, for the person I love best in the world. I’d be lost—unhappy—without the farm. If the city creeps up on me here, as they predict it will, I don’t know what I shall do.”
But Dirk had a prediction of his own to make. “Chicago’ll never grow this way, with all those steel mills and hunkies to the south of us. The north side is going to be the place to live. It is already.”
“The place for whom?”
“For the people with money.”
She smiled then so that you saw the funny little wrinkle across her nose. “Well, then the south section of Chicago is going to be all right for us yet a while.”
“Just you wait till I’m successful. Then there’ll be no more working for you.”