Seth saw with a sadness he could not uproot that Celia was one of these. His belief, therefore, in the efficacy of the child to comfort her went the way of other beliefs he had been forced one by one to relinquish. When, after some weeks of tending her, the old woman was gone, and Celia was able to be about, it was he who took charge of the child, while she, in her weakness, gave herself up to an increased disgust for her surroundings and an even deeper longing to go back home.
It was in vain that he showed her the broad green of the wheat fields, smiling in the sunlight, waving in the wind.
Some blight would come to them.
Fruitlessly he pictured to her the little house he would build for her when the crop was sold.
She listened incredulously.
And then came the grasshoppers.
For miles over the vastness of the desert they rushed in swarms, blackening the earth, eclipsing the sun.
Having accomplished their mission of destruction, they disappeared as quickly as they had come, leaving desolation in their wake. The prairie farms had been reduced to wastes, no leaves, no trees, no prairie flowers, no grasses, no weeds.
One old woman had planted a garden near her dugout, trim, neat, flourishing, with its rows of onions, potatoes and peas in the pod. It was utterly demolished. She covered her head with her apron and wept old disconsolate tears at the sight of it.