“Afterwards I thought of two or three ways I might have taken to keep the child with me, but nobody encouraged me much to undertake it; and I saw no better way at the time than just to go with them myself a part of the way, especially as a gentleman, who had to do with western railroads, offered me a free ticket to Chicago and back. The squire and Mrs Peabody said all they could to put me off the notion.
“‘Ruby,’ said she, ‘if you go, you’ll marry Ezra Stone.’
“‘That’s his idea, anyway,’ said the squire; ‘and Ruby, don’t you do it.’
“‘I know Ezra Stone,’ said I, thinking all the time that what they said might be true. And so it was.
“Ezra met us at Chicago; and as soon as I saw his face I felt sick at the thought of letting Myra’s children go off with him alone. ‘What kind of a woman will he put over them?’ said I to myself.
“Well, you know all about it. I did marry him, right there in Chicago. He didn’t say much. Nothing he could have said would have had much influence with me one way or another. But I saw Myra’s eyes looking at me every time that Jim or the baby smiled at me, and I couldn’t let them all go away alone to I didn’t know who or what. No, he didn’t say much; and afterwards he rather twitted me with being ready the minute I was asked. I don’t suppose I should have done any different if I had known just all that was before me. I wasn’t a free agent in the matter.
“Yes—oh, yes!—I laid the matter before the Lord, or I thought I did. I knew that I wasn’t going to have any easy time, and that it wasn’t my own pleasure I was seeking; and that made me feel as though I was just trying to do my duty, and that the Lord would see me through. Yes, I was self-willed about it. I was faithless, I suppose, and afraid just to leave the boys in God’s hands. Oh, yes, He did see me through; and more than made up for the trouble I had to endure, and I wouldn’t have anything different from all that He sent me! But I am making a long story, and there isn’t really much to tell.
“The next three years was just a dead level. Nothing happened but just summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest. But such harvests! Full and rich beyond any experience we had ever had of harvests. High prices were given too, and much money must have come in. But with that part of it the boys and I had nothing to do. There was nothing but hard work, early and late, to show as far as we were concerned.
“I did my best for them. I kept them at their books, Sundays and rainy days, and winter evenings; and they were smart boys and learnt well. They were good boys and pleasant-natured, taking after their mother, and I took comfort with them in many ways. They were good boys to work too. There wasn’t a lazy bone in one of them; and, while they did the work that was expected of them, everything went well between them and their father. He let them pretty much alone at other times. His heart was set on just one thing, and that was making money, and the more he got the more he wanted. He didn’t spare himself, and he didn’t spare any one else, if the chance to make a dollar came along.
“Jim was doing the work of a man before he was fifteen; and every year brought more to be done, for more land was taken up as fast as it could be paid for. Ezra did have wonderful success. After the narrow stony fields of the old place, it was a sight to see the scores of acres of wheat growing so full and strong. It was threshed right there on the ground, and sometimes it was sold there; and if he had only been content with moderate success, he might have been living now, and well-to-do.