Champers’ store of energy seemed exhaustless. Following this council he fell upon the Grass River Valley and threshed it to his profit.
One mid-June evening the Grass River schoolhouse was lighted early, while up from the prairie ranches came the work-worn farmers.
This year the crop outlook was bad, yet somehow an expectant spirit lifted sagging shoulders and looked out through hopeful eyes.
While the men exchanged neighborly greetings, a group 195 of children, the second generation in the valley, romped about in the twilight outside.
“Here comes Thaine,” they shouted as Asher Aydelot and his boy came down the trail.
“Come on, Thaine,” Leigh Shirley said, reaching for his hand. “We are going to play drop the handkerchief.”
“Thaine’s going to stand by me,” pretty Jo Bennington declared, pushing Leigh boisterously aside.
Josephine, the week-old baby Mrs. Aydelot had gone to see one day nine years ago, had grown into a big, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked girl who lorded it over every other child in the neighborhood. And every other child submitted except Leigh Shirley, who had a quiet habit of going straight ahead about her affairs in a way that vexed the pretty Jo not a little. From the first coming of Leigh among the children Jo had resented her independence. But, young as they all were, she objected most to Thaine Aydelot’s claiming Leigh as his playmate. Thaine was Jo’s idol from earliest memory.
“What’s the row here?” Todd Stewart, Junior, broke in. “You mustn’t fuss or you’ll all have to go in and listen to Darley Champers and I’ll play out here by myself.”
Todd was a young-hearted, half-grown boy now, able to work all day in the hayfield or to romp like a child with younger children in the evening. He was half a dozen years older than Thaine and Jo, a difference that would tend to disappear by the end of a decade.