The next afternoon Claude took Mrs. Erlich to the football game and came home with the family for dinner.  He lingered on day after day, but after the first few evenings his heart was growing a little heavier all the time.  The Erlich boys had so many new interests he couldn’t keep up with them; they had been going on, and he had been standing still.  He wasn’t conceited enough to mind that.  The thing that hurt was the feeling of being out of it, of being lost in another kind of life in which ideas played but little part.  He was a stranger who walked in and sat down here; but he belonged out in the big, lonely country, where people worked hard with their backs and got tired like the horses, and were too sleepy at night to think of anything to say.  If Mrs. Erlich and her Hungarian woman made lentil soup and potato dumplings and Wiener-Schnitzel for him, it only made the plain fare on the farm seem the heavier.

When the second Friday came round, he went to bid his friends good-bye and explained that he must be going home tomorrow.  On leaving the house that night, he looked back at the ruddy windows and told himself that it was goodbye indeed, and not, as Mrs. Erlich had fondly said, auf wiedersehen.  Coming here only made him more discontented with his lot; his frail claim on this kind of life existed no longer.  He must settle down into something that was his own, take hold of it with both hands, no matter how grim it was.  The next day, during his journey out through the bleak winter country, he felt that he was going deeper and deeper into reality.

Claude had not written when he would be home, but on Saturday there were always some of the neighbours in town.  He rode out with one of the Yoeder boys, and from their place walked on the rest of the way.  He told his mother he was glad to be back again.  He sometimes felt as if it were disloyal to her for him to be so happy with Mrs. Erlich.  His mother had been shut away from the world on a farm for so many years; and even before that, Vermont was no very stimulating place to grow up in, he guessed.  She had not had a chance, any more than he had, at those things which make the mind more supple and keep the feeling young.

The next morning it was snowing outside, and they had a long, pleasant Sunday breakfast.  Mrs. Wheeler said they wouldn’t try to go to church, as Claude must be tired.  He worked about the place until noon, making the stock comfortable and looking after things that Dan had neglected in his absence.  After dinner he sat down at the secretary and wrote a long letter to his friends in Lincoln.  Whenever he lifted his eyes for a moment, he saw the pasture bluffs and the softly falling snow.  There was something beautiful about the submissive way in which the country met winter.  It made one contented,—­sad, too.  He sealed his letter and lay down on the couch to read the paper, but was soon asleep.