"This is my home," I repeated.
When we were alone I turned to mother in the spirit of the builder. "Give me another year and I'll make this a homestead worth talking about. My head is full of plans for its improvement."
"It's good enough for me as it is," she protested.
"No, it isn't," I retorted quickly. "Nothing that I can do is good enough for you, but I intend to make you entirely happy if I can."
Here I make an end of this story, here at the close of an epoch of western settlement, here with my father and mother sitting beside me in the light of a tender Thanksgiving, in our new old home and facing a peaceful future. I was thirty-three years of age, and in a certain very real sense this plot of ground, this protecting roof may be taken as the symbols of my hard-earned first success as well as the defiant gages of other necessary battles which I must fight and win.
As I was leaving next day for Chicago, I said, "Mother, what shall I bring you from the city?"
With a shy smile she answered, "There is only one thing more you can bring me,—one thing more that I want."
"What is that?"
"A daughter. I need a daughter—and some grandchildren."