. A new Ben Westerveld--the old Ben
Westerveld. Ben Westerveld, the farmer, the monarch over six hundred
acres of bounteous bottomland.

"That's all right, Dike," he said. "You're going back. So'm I. I've
got another twenty years of work in me. We're going back to the farm."

Bella turned on him, a wildcat. "We ain't! Not me! We ain't! I'm not
agoin' back to the farm."

But Ben Westerveld was master again in his own house. "You're goin'
back, Bella," he said quietly, "an' things are goin' to be different.
You're goin' to run the house the way I say, or I'll know why. If you
can't do it, I'll get them in that can. An' me and Dike, we're goin'
back to our wheat and our apples and our hogs. Yessir! There ain't a
bigger man-size job in the world."

Un Morso doo Pang [1919]

When you are twenty you do not patronize sunsets unless you are
unhappy, in love, or both. Tessie Golden was both. Six months ago a
sunset had wrung from her only a casual tribute, such as: "My! Look how
red the sky is!" delivered as unemotionally as a weather bulletin.

Tessie Golden sat on the top step of the back porch now, a slim, inert
heap in a cotton house coat and scuffed slippers. Her head was propped
wearily against the porch post. Her hands were limp in her lap. Her
face was turned toward the west, where shone that mingling of orange
and rose known as salmon pink. But no answering radiance in the girl's
face met the glow in the Wisconsin sky.

Saturday night, after supper in Chippewa, Wisconsin, Tessie Golden of
the presunset era would have been calling from her bedroom to the
kitchen: "Ma, what'd you do with my pink blouse?"

And from the kitchen: "It's in your second bureau drawer. The collar
was kind of mussed from Wednesday night, and I give it a little
pressing while my iron was on."

At seven-thirty Tessie would have emerged from her bedroom in the pink
blouse that might have been considered alarmingly frank as to texture
and precariously low as to neck had Tessie herself not been so
reassuringly unopulent; a black taffeta skirt, very brief; a hat with a
good deal of French blue about it; fragile high-heeled pumps with bows.

As she passed through the sitting room on her way out, her mother would
appear in the doorway, dishtowel in hand. Her pride in this slim young
thing and her love of her she concealed with a thin layer of carping
criticism.

"Runnin' downtown again, I s'pose." A keen eye o