“Well, now,” he would say, “you take this year’s wheat crop with about 917,000,000 bushels of wheat harvested, why, that’s what’s going to win the war!  Yes, sirree!  No wheat, no winning, that’s what I say.”

“Ya-as, it is!” the city men would scoff.  But the queer part of it is that Farmer Ben was right.

Minnie got into the habit of using him as a sort of nursemaid.  It gave her many hours of unearned freedom for gadding and gossiping.

“Pa, will you look after Pearlie for a little while this morning?  I got to run downtown to match something and she gets so tired and mean-acting if I take her along.  Ma’s goin’ with me.”

He loved the feel of Pearlie’s, small, velvet-soft hand in his big fist.  He called her “little feller,” and fed her forbidden dainties.  His big brown fingers were miraculously deft at buttoning and unbuttoning her tiny garments, and wiping her soft lips, and performing a hundred tender offices.  I think that he was playing a sort of game with himself, and that he pretended this was Dike become a baby again.  Once the pair managed to get over to Lincoln Park, where they spent a glorious day looking at the animals, eating popcorn, and riding on the miniature railway.

They returned, tired, dusty, and happy, to a double tirade.

* * * * *

Bella engaged in a great deal of what she called worrying about Dike.  Ben spoke of him seldom, but the boy was always present in his thoughts.  They had written him of their move, but he had not seemed to get the impression of its permanence.  His letters indicated that he thought they were visiting Minnie, or taking a vacation in the city.  Dike’s letters were few.  Ben treasured them, and read and reread them.  When the armistice news came, and with it the possibility of Dike’s return, Ben tried to fancy him fitting into the life of the city.  And his whole being revolted at the thought.

He saw the pimply-faced, sallow youths in their one-button suits and striped shirts standing at the corner of Halsted and Sixty-Third, spitting languidly and handling their limp cigarettes with an amazing labial dexterity.  Their conversation was low-voiced, sinister, and terse, and their eyes narrowed as they watched the over-dressed, scarlet-lipped girls go by.  A great fear clutched at Ben Westerveld’s heart.

The lack of exercise and manual labour began to tell on Ben.  He did not grow fat from idleness.  Instead his skin seemed to sag and hang on his frame, like a garment grown too large for him.  He walked a great deal.  Perhaps that had something to do with it.  He tramped miles of city pavements.  He was a very lonely man.  And then, one day, quite by accident, he came upon South Water Street.  Came upon it, stared at it as a water-crazed traveller in a desert gazes upon the spring in the oasis, and drank from it, thirstily, gratefully.