Coming down on the train he had made up his mind that if Hansen were in town he would tell him that he could have the land. He felt so very tired and old, so bowed down with Fred's “What's the use?” that he saw that he himself would never get the mortgage paid off. And Fred had said something about making the railroads pay it. He did not know just how the boy figured that out—indeed, he was getting a little dazed about the whole thing—but if Fritz had any idea of having the railroads pay off the mortgage on his farm—he couldn't forget how the boy looked when he said it, face white, eyes burning—he would see to it right now that there was no chance of that.
He tried not to look at the land as he drove past it on the way home. He wondered just how much campaign literature it had paid for. He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing Claus Hansen putting up his hay over there in that field.
He had felt so badly about telling mother that he told it very bluntly. And because he felt so sorry for her he said not one kind word, but just sat quiet, looking the other way.
She was clearing off the table. He heard her scraping out the potato dish with great care. Then she was coming over to him. She came awkwardly, hesitatingly—her life had not schooled her in meeting emotional moments beautifully—but she laid her hand upon him, patted him on the shoulder as one would a child. “Never mind, papa—never you mind. It will make it easier for us. There's enough left—and it will make it easier. We're getting on—we're—” There she broke off abruptly into a vigorous scolding of the dog, who was lifting covetous nostrils to a piece of meat.
That was all. And there was no woman in the country had worked harder. And Martha was ambitious; she liked land, and she did not like Claus Hansen's wife.
Yes, he had had a good wife.
Then there was that other thing to tell her—about Fritz. That was harder.
Mother had not gone up to the city to hear Fritz “speak” because her feet were bothering her, and she could not wear her shoes. He had had a vague idea of how disappointed she was, though she had said very little about it. Martha never had been one to say much about things. When he came back, of course she had wanted to know all about it, and he had put her off. Now he had to tell her.
It was much harder; and in the telling of it he broke down.
This time she did not come over and pat his shoulder. Perhaps Martha knew—likely she had never heard the word intuition, but, anyway, she knew—that it was beyond that.