want to. That’s all right.”
He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the
path up to the house. She was so plucky and so stooped, his dear
mother! He guessed if she could stand having these men about,
could cook and wash for them, he could drive them to town!
Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca
coat and went off in the rattling buckboard in which, though he
kept two automobiles, he still drove about the country. He said
nothing to his wife; it was her business to guess whether or not
he would be home for dinner. She and Mahailey could have a good
time scrubbing and sweeping all day, with no men around to bother
them.
There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off
somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a
meeting of the Farmers’ Telephone directors;—to see how his
neighbours were getting on with their work, if there was nothing
else to look after. He preferred his buckboard to a car because
it was light, went easily over heavy or rough roads, and was so
rickety that he never felt he must suggest his wife’s
accompanying him. Besides he could see the country better when he
didn’t have to keep his mind on the road. He had come to this
part of Nebraska when the Indians and the buffalo were still
about, remembered the grasshopper year and the big cyclone, had
watched the farms emerge one by one from the great rolling page
where once only the wind wrote its story. He had encouraged new
settlers to take up homesteads, urged on courtships, lent young
fellows the money to marry on, seen families grow and prosper;
until he felt a little as if all this were his own enterprise.
The changes, not only those the years made, but those the seasons
made, were interesting to him.
People recognized Nat Wheeler and his cart a mile away. He sat
massive and comfortable, weighing down one end of the slanting
seat, his driving hand lying on his knee. Even his German
neighbours, the Yoeders, who hated to stop work for a quarter of
an hour on any account, were glad to see him coming. The
merchants in the little towns about the county missed him if he
didn’t drop in once a week or so. He was active in politics;
never ran for an office himself, but often took up the cause of a
friend and conducted his campaign for him.
The French saying, “Joy of the street, sorrow of the home,” was
exemplified in Mr. Wheeler, though not at all in the French way.
His own affairs were of secondary importance to him. In the early
days he had homesteaded and bought and leased enough land to make
him rich. Now he had only to rent it out to good farmers who
liked to work—he didn’t, and of that he made no secret. When he
was at home, he usually sat upstairs in the living room, reading
newspapers. He subscribed for a dozen or more—the list included
a weekly devoted to scandal—and he was well informed about what
was going on in the world. He had magnificent health, and illness
in himself or in other people struck him as humorous. To be sure,
