This was Claude’s first innovation, and it did not meet with approval.  When Bayliss came out to spend Sunday with his mother, he asked her what Claude thought he was doing, anyhow.  If he wanted to change the crop on that field, why didn’t he plant oats in the spring, and then get into wheat next fall?  Cutting fodder and preparing the ground now, would only hold him back in his work.  When Mr. Wheeler came home for a short visit, he jocosely referred to that quarter as “Claude’s wheat field.”

Claude went ahead with what he had undertaken to do, but all through September he was nervous and apprehensive about the weather.  Heavy rains, if they came, would make him late with his wheat-planting, and then there would certainly be criticism.  In reality, nobody cared much whether the planting was late or not, but Claude thought they did, and sometimes in the morning he awoke in a state of panic because he wasn’t getting ahead faster.  He had Dan and one of August Yoeder’s four sons to help him, and he worked early and late.  The new field he ploughed and drilled himself.  He put a great deal of young energy into it, and buried a great deal of discontent in its dark furrows.  Day after day he flung himself upon the land and planted it with what was fermenting in him, glad to be so tired at night that he could not think.

Ralph came home for Leonard Dawson’s wedding, on the first of October.  All the Wheelers went to the wedding, even Mahailey, and there was a great gathering of the country folk and townsmen.

After Ralph left, Claude had the place to himself again, and the work went on as usual.  The stock did well, and there were no vexatious interruptions.  The fine weather held, and every morning when Claude got up, another gold day stretched before him like a glittering carpet, leading...?  When the question where the days were leading struck him on the edge of his bed, he hurried to dress and get down-stairs in time to fetch wood and coal for Mahailey.  They often reached the kitchen at the same moment, and she would shake her finger at him and say, “You come down to help me, you nice boy, you!” At least he was of some use to Mahailey.  His father could hire one of the Yoeder boys to look after the place, but Mahailey wouldn’t let any one else save her old back.

Mrs. Wheeler, as well as Mahailey, enjoyed that fall.  She slept late in the morning, and read and rested in the afternoon.  She made herself some new house-dresses out of a grey material Claude chose.  “It’s almost like being a bride, keeping house for just you, Claude,” she sometimes said.

Soon Claude had the satisfaction of seeing a blush of green come up over his brown wheat fields, visible first in the dimples and little hollows, then flickering over the knobs and levels like a fugitive smile.  He watched the green blades coming every day, when he and Dan went afield with their wagons to gather corn.  Claude sent Dan to shuck on the north quarter, and he worked on the south.  He always brought in one more load a day than Dan did,—­that was to be expected.  Dan explained this very reasonably, Claude thought, one afternoon when they were hooking up their teams.