Asher carried Virginia to the sunshine at the west window from which she could see the beautiful outdoor world.
“We wouldn’t leave here now if we could,” she declared as she beheld all the glory of the springtime rolling away before her eyes.
“Bank accounts bring comforts, but they do not make all of life nor consecrate death. We have given our first-born back to the prairie. It is sacred soil now,” Asher replied.
And then they talked of many things, but mostly of Dr. Carey.
“I have known him from childhood,” Virginia said. “He was my very first sweetheart, as very first sweethearts go. He went into the war when he was young. I didn’t know much that happened after that. He was at home, I think, when you were in that hospital where I first saw you, and—oh, yes, Asher, dear, he was at home when your blessed letter came, the one with the old greasy deuce of hearts and the sunflower. It was this same Bo Peep, Carey’s boy, 132 who brought it to me up in the glen behind the big house. Horace left Virginia just after that.” Virginia closed her eyes and lived in the past again.
“I wonder you never cared for Dr. Carey, Virgie. He is a prince among men,” Asher said, as he leaned over her chair.
“Oh, I might, if my king had not sent me that sunflower just then. It made a new world for me.”
“But I am only a common farmer, Virgie, just a king of a Kansas claim, just a home-builder on the prairie,” Asher insisted.
“Asher, if you had your choice this minute of all the things you might be, what would you choose to be?” Virginia asked.
“Just a common farmer, just a king of a Kansas claim,” Asher replied. Then looking out toward the swell of ground beside the Grass River schoolhouse where the one little mound of green earth marked his first-born’s grave, he added, “Just a home-builder on the prairies.”