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 			<p>The woman wiped her well-soaked hands on a limp apron, and replied in perfect Pennsylvania Dutch;</p>
 			<p>“I don’t understand you.” But she smiled a smile of extraordinary width.</p>
 			<p>They faced each other, Scotland and Germany, curiously for one moment. Then Barbara pointed dramatically at the pansies. There was that look on her face that was understood by frontierswomen of many tongues. The German began babbling sympathetically about her display, pointing out one beauty after another, breaking off little sprays to hold near her visitor’s longing nose. So much there was that Barbara wanted to ask, and her hostess wanted to explain, and they understood each other after so many repetitions and efforts! Barbara examined each plant, and felt the soil it grew in. She bowed her face down to them again and again, hungrily. Not one did she omit to sigh over enviously. Presently the German led her into the shanty, and set before her in a red-carpeted, closely-guarded parlor, coffee and coffeecake, which Barbara esteemed but lightly, surprised out of politeness by the fact that on the kitchen table a pair of pigeons sat cooing. Then, the refreshments being finished, the woman took her by the hand, and led her out of the house, down a barren street, just as she was, in her wet dress, unhatted, red-faced. Barbara surmised she was being taken to a place where plants were sold.</p>
-			<p>They came to a large square house, built on a high foundation, in a yard planted with trees which were not just small sticks, approached by a walk which had wide blossoming borders which Barbara would fain have examined. But her guide waddled up determinedly and knocked on the door. A lady opened it, a lady perhaps fifty, whose gray calico was fastened at the throat most primly by an oval brooch. She was sad-faced, and gray-haired, and as the German woman babbled to her, she turned and smiled upon Barbara gravely and kindly, and asked them to come in. But the German was not for sitting in a house on such a morning. The lady put on a wide hat, and gloves, and came out to the border. In her foreign language, which was merely New England English, she discussed her loves, pointing out one blossom and another. Her pansies never equaled the German’s. But look at the number of buds on her peonies! She could hardly wait till they opened. And <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McNair followed her about with the great question on her tongue, namely, where does one get these things in this country?</p>
+			<p>They came to a large square house, built on a high foundation, in a yard planted with trees which were not just small sticks, approached by a walk which had wide blossoming borders which Barbara would fain have examined. But her guide waddled up determinedly and knocked on the door. A lady opened it, a lady perhaps fifty, whose gray calico was fastened at the throat most primly by an oval brooch. She was sad-faced, and gray-haired, and as the German woman babbled to her, she turned and smiled upon Barbara gravely and kindly, and asked them to come in. But the German was not for sitting in a house on such a morning. The lady put on a wide hat, and gloves, and came out to the border. In her foreign language, which was merely New England English, she discussed her loves, pointing out one blossom and another. Her pansies never equaled the German’s. But look at the number of buds on her peonies! She could hardly wait till they opened. And <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> McNair followed her about with the great question on her tongue, namely, where does one get these things in this country?</p>
 			<p>She was standing by a yellow rosebush when she asked that, first, and its owner, bending down, said;</p>
 			<p>“Here’s a good little new one now. You may have that. Have you a place for it? Where do you live?”</p>
 			<p>“Twenty-five miles west.”</p>
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 			<p>“Have you been here long?”</p>
 			<p>“Long enough,” said Barbara, simply. “I came in November.”</p>
 			<p>The lady sighed again, and went to get her spade. She asked again if Barbara had a place for the rose. Barbara was offended at the suggestion she might not cherish that plant until death. Where can you buy them here? she asked again.</p>
-			<p>That rose, the lady explained, she had brought with her from Davenport, in a little box with grape cuttings and the peony, which she had carried in her lap in a covered wagon long before there were railroads to the town. She had brought it to Davenport coming down the Ohio and up the Mississippi soon after she was married. A woman had given it to her when she left Ohio for the West. The peony her mother had brought from eastern to western Ohio many years ago, and when she had died, her daughter had chosen the peony for her share of the estate. Her mother had got it from her mother, who came a bride to Ohio from western New York, clasping it against her noisy heart, out of the way of the high waters her husband had led her horse through, across unbridged streams, cherishing it more resolutely than the household stuffs which had to be abandoned in pathless woods. Her great-grandfather had brought it west in New York in his saddle bag, soon after Washington’s inauguration as he returned from New York City. She supposed before that the Dutch had maybe brought it from Holland to Long Island. There had been tulips, too, but the pigs had eaten them in Ohio. She had wondered sometimes if it was the fate of the peony to be carried clear to the Pacific by lonely women. At least, if she gave a bit of it to <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McNair, it would be that much farther west on its way to its destination, which she, for one, hoped it might soon reach, so that there would be some rest for women. Let <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McNair remember to come for a root of it in the fall, when her fence would be finished. Without fences it is useless to try to protect flowers. Her mother in Ohio had had a sort of high stockade made of thorny brush around a little garden, so that one had to come near, and look down over the top to get a glimpse of the blossoms. But the pigs had been very hungry in those days. Their destruction of that garden and the rescue of the peony she had heard her mother tell about with tears in her eyes twenty years afterwards. It was one of the sorrows of her life.</p>
-			<p>When <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McNair went home that day, she had with her the roots of all transplantable things, lilacs, white and purple, roses pink and red and yellow, pinks and young hollyhocks, grape cuttings and snowballs. She had a pile of old <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Horticultural Advisers</i> from the lady’s library, full of advice about planting windbreaks, and letters from frontier gardeners who had morning glories growing over their young pines, and walls of hollyhocks twelve feet high. She had been urged to stay at the lady’s for dinner, and the German had made her promise always to come back to her for coffee when she came to town. The road was full of ruts and swamps, and her bones ached long before the springless wagon got home. But her plants had felt no joltings, for she had held them carefully in her lap. That was the first day she sang in the United States of America. It was her “Americanization.” Her husband never even noticed her song, however. He was suffering acutely from the price of glass windows.</p>
+			<p>That rose, the lady explained, she had brought with her from Davenport, in a little box with grape cuttings and the peony, which she had carried in her lap in a covered wagon long before there were railroads to the town. She had brought it to Davenport coming down the Ohio and up the Mississippi soon after she was married. A woman had given it to her when she left Ohio for the West. The peony her mother had brought from eastern to western Ohio many years ago, and when she had died, her daughter had chosen the peony for her share of the estate. Her mother had got it from her mother, who came a bride to Ohio from western New York, clasping it against her noisy heart, out of the way of the high waters her husband had led her horse through, across unbridged streams, cherishing it more resolutely than the household stuffs which had to be abandoned in pathless woods. Her great-grandfather had brought it west in New York in his saddle bag, soon after Washington’s inauguration as he returned from New York City. She supposed before that the Dutch had maybe brought it from Holland to Long Island. There had been tulips, too, but the pigs had eaten them in Ohio. She had wondered sometimes if it was the fate of the peony to be carried clear to the Pacific by lonely women. At least, if she gave a bit of it to <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> McNair, it would be that much farther west on its way to its destination, which she, for one, hoped it might soon reach, so that there would be some rest for women. Let <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> McNair remember to come for a root of it in the fall, when her fence would be finished. Without fences it is useless to try to protect flowers. Her mother in Ohio had had a sort of high stockade made of thorny brush around a little garden, so that one had to come near, and look down over the top to get a glimpse of the blossoms. But the pigs had been very hungry in those days. Their destruction of that garden and the rescue of the peony she had heard her mother tell about with tears in her eyes twenty years afterwards. It was one of the sorrows of her life.</p>
+			<p>When <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> McNair went home that day, she had with her the roots of all transplantable things, lilacs, white and purple, roses pink and red and yellow, pinks and young hollyhocks, grape cuttings and snowballs. She had a pile of old <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Horticultural Advisers</i> from the lady’s library, full of advice about planting windbreaks, and letters from frontier gardeners who had morning glories growing over their young pines, and walls of hollyhocks twelve feet high. She had been urged to stay at the lady’s for dinner, and the German had made her promise always to come back to her for coffee when she came to town. The road was full of ruts and swamps, and her bones ached long before the springless wagon got home. But her plants had felt no joltings, for she had held them carefully in her lap. That was the first day she sang in the United States of America. It was her “Americanization.” Her husband never even noticed her song, however. He was suffering acutely from the price of glass windows.</p>
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 			<h2 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">XIV</h2>
-			<p>John came out for a three months’ vacation the next year and worked again for Wully. They had acres of sod corn that summer, and wheat to make a miser chuckle. Both men, and whatever neighborly passerby they might be able to hire, worked day after day till they staggered. To have stopped while yet there was sufficient daylight to distinguish another hill of corn would have been shirking; to go to supper while yet one could straighten up without a sharp pain in his back would have been laziness. Yet John was never too tired to choose an idiom as far removed as possible from the one he heard about him. Now that he had been in Chicago he had a growing contempt, which never failed to amuse Wully, for the speech of his own people. What was it they spoke, he demanded scornfully, swinging a violent hoe among the weeds. It was Scotch no longer. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t American, certainly. It was just a kind of⁠—he tried all summer to describe it satisfactorily in a word. Once he called it “the gruntings of the inarticulate forthright.” <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Alex McNair was the only one that spoke pure anything, he declared. John seemed to like that woman, strange to say. Wully suspected he listened to her because her pronunciation fascinated him, but at Wully’s he was intolerant of any tendency towards Scotticisms. Wully’s and Chirstie’s articulation he supervised continually, their grammar and their diction. They were not allowed to say before John, “She won’t can some,” or “I used to could.” A less happy man than Wully might have resented correction from a younger brother. Wully took it gratefully, feeling he was getting not a poor substitute for the schooling he had been forced to miss. And when he saw his mother, he would repeat John’s innovations to her with gusto. “Indeed!” she exclaimed upon one such occasion. “The gruntings of the inar⁠—what, Wully? Lawsie me! You did well to remember that!” “Yes,” cried Wully. “But John didn’t <em>remember</em> them, mother. He makes them up!” Chirstie would have been annoyed sometimes by John’s attitude, if her son had not been so devoted to his uncle. Wee Johnnie refused to go to sleep in the evening till he had had his daily romp with John on the doorstep. And even if he did treat her like an unimportant younger sister, she had to like her baby’s playmate.</p>
+			<p>John came out for a three months’ vacation the next year and worked again for Wully. They had acres of sod corn that summer, and wheat to make a miser chuckle. Both men, and whatever neighborly passerby they might be able to hire, worked day after day till they staggered. To have stopped while yet there was sufficient daylight to distinguish another hill of corn would have been shirking; to go to supper while yet one could straighten up without a sharp pain in his back would have been laziness. Yet John was never too tired to choose an idiom as far removed as possible from the one he heard about him. Now that he had been in Chicago he had a growing contempt, which never failed to amuse Wully, for the speech of his own people. What was it they spoke, he demanded scornfully, swinging a violent hoe among the weeds. It was Scotch no longer. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t American, certainly. It was just a kind of⁠—he tried all summer to describe it satisfactorily in a word. Once he called it “the gruntings of the inarticulate forthright.” <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Alex McNair was the only one that spoke pure anything, he declared. John seemed to like that woman, strange to say. Wully suspected he listened to her because her pronunciation fascinated him, but at Wully’s he was intolerant of any tendency towards Scotticisms. Wully’s and Chirstie’s articulation he supervised continually, their grammar and their diction. They were not allowed to say before John, “She won’t can some,” or “I used to could.” A less happy man than Wully might have resented correction from a younger brother. Wully took it gratefully, feeling he was getting not a poor substitute for the schooling he had been forced to miss. And when he saw his mother, he would repeat John’s innovations to her with gusto. “Indeed!” she exclaimed upon one such occasion. “The gruntings of the inar⁠—what, Wully? Lawsie me! You did well to remember that!” “Yes,” cried Wully. “But John didn’t <em>remember</em> them, mother. He makes them up!” Chirstie would have been annoyed sometimes by John’s attitude, if her son had not been so devoted to his uncle. Wee Johnnie refused to go to sleep in the evening till he had had his daily romp with John on the doorstep. And even if he did treat her like an unimportant younger sister, she had to like her baby’s playmate.</p>
 			<p>The child was by this time the joyous little husky heart of the family. John had noticed him dutifully at first because he was Wully’s, but he came speedily to love him for his own diverting charms. There had been an evening nearly two years ago, when he came into the little room where he and his sister cooked their meals, and had found her stretched out on the bed crying. He read the letter she gave him in explanation. His mother had written about the impending disgraceful baby. John hadn’t forgotten his sensation of amazement, or the sharp wound that his disdainful sense of superiority sustained, but now he seldom recalled either. It outraged his sense of the fitness of things that he so well understood that scrape; that he had to wonder at times that passion was ever less rampant, less controlled, than in the case he had to consider. The information encouraged a budding cynicism within him. If it had been anyone but Wully⁠—even Allen⁠—he would have understood it better. He had read the letter, and stood looking at it. Then without a word he went out, and walked about the streets through the dusk. And never a mention of it passed between the brother and sister. And then when he came home, and saw Wully⁠—when that brotherly, honest geniality shone out simply towards him⁠—he couldn’t think of that story. Wully’s presence denied it, obliterated it. That was all. And wee Johnnie justified himself.</p>
 			<p>John was, of course, keen about having his nephew speak English undefiled, and between their little games he begged him patiently to say “Uncle John.” But, after hours of slipping gleefully away from effort, the baby came no nearer the desired sounds than “Diddle!” He had lovely, twinkling ways of making light of instruction. He would duck his curly head, and hold it reflectingly to one side, and purse up his little lips enough to have spoken volumes. Yet when he saw his uncle coming towards the house, he would sing out that absurd “Diddle,” delightedly, waiting an award for such perfect enunciation. When his grandmother got him into her arms, she would beg him to say “Grannie.” And he would say it, in a way that satisfied him entirely. Only he called the word “Pooh!” And in that absurdity, too, he persisted. “Mama” he said, and “Papa” and “chickie” and “Diddle” and “Pooh.” And that was all. No coaxing could elicit more from him. Chirstie grew vexed at times hearing other women tell how early and plainly their children had talked. She longed to have Johnnie shine vocally. Sometimes she almost wondered if he wasn’t “simple.” But her mother-in-law consoled her by telling about her John. He had spoken hardly a word till he was three, and she was really getting alarmed about it, when suddenly he seemed to join the family conversation, so rapidly he learned words and sentences.</p>
 			<p>So with that foolish “Ayn?” which was his question, and with the “Ayn” which was his consent, Bonnie Wee Johnnie went on ruling his domain. The men never started to the fields with a team without letting the baby ride a few steps on the back of the old mare. No one plowed into a bird’s nest without saving an egg to show the baby. No one ran across a long gaudy pheasant’s feather without saving it for Johnnie’s soft fingers to feel. At noon John carried him out to pat the colt’s nose, or to see the little pigs nosing their way among one another to their mother’s milk. The baby had just naturally become Wully’s child. Wully could never bear the thought of Peter Keith. He kept it resolutely out of his mind. He had to. He shrank from it as he had never shrunk from the face of an enemy. Making the baby his own helped the forgetting. Barbara McNair said to Isobel McLaughlin that she had never seen a man with such a way with a baby as Wully had with that child. And Isobel McLaughlin answered that it was small wonder Wully had a way with babies, since he had carried one in his arms ever since he was three years old. Month by month Wully became in the eyes of that prairie-bound world a more exemplary and unsuspected father to Chirstie’s son.</p>