It would be gratifying to be able to record that in these eight or nine years Selina had been able to work wonders on the DeJong farm; that the house glittered, the crops thrived richly, the barn housed sleek cattle. But it could not be truthfully said. True, she had achieved some changes, but at the cost of terrific effort. A less indomitable woman would have sunk into apathy years before. The house had a coat of paint—lead-gray, because it was cheapest. There were two horses—the second a broken-down old mare, blind in one eye, that they had picked up for five dollars after it had been turned out to pasture for future sale as horse-carcass. Piet Pon, the mare’s owner who drove a milk route, had hoped to get three dollars for the animal, dead. A month of rest and pasturage restored the mare to usefulness. Selina had made the bargain, and Pervus had scolded her roundly for it. Now he drove the mare to market, saw that she pulled more sturdily than the other horse, but had never retracted. It was no quality of meanness in him. Pervus merely was like that. But the west sixteen! That had been Selina’s most heroic achievement. Her plan, spoken of to Pervus in the first month of her marriage, had taken years to mature; even now was but a partial triumph. She had even descended to nagging. “Why don’t we put in asparagus?” “Asparagus!” considered something of a luxury, and rarely included in the High Prairie truck farmer’s products. “And wait three years for a crop!” “Yes, but then we’d have it. And a plantation’s good for ten years, once it’s started.” “Plantation! What is that? An asparagus plantation? Asparagus I’ve always heard of in beds.” “That’s the old idea. I’ve been reading up on it. The new way is to plant asparagus in rows, the way you would rhubarb or corn. Plant six feet apart, and four acres anyway.” He was not even sufficiently interested to be amused. “Yeh, four acres where? In the clay land, maybe.” He did laugh then, if the short bitter sound he made could be construed as indicating mirth. “Out of a book.” “In the clay land,” Selina urged, crisply. “And out of a book. Every farmer in High Prairie raises cabbage, turnips, carrots, beets, beans, onions, and they’re better quality than ours. That west sixteen isn’t bringing you anything, so what difference does it make if I am wrong! Let me put my own money into it, I’ve thought it all out, Pervus. Please. We’ll under-drain the clay soil. Just five or six acres, to start. We’ll manure it heavily—as much as we can afford—and then for two years we’ll plant potatoes there. We’ll put in our asparagus plants the third spring—one-year-old seedlings. I’ll promise to keep it weeded—Dirk and I. He’ll be a big boy by that time.” “How much manure?” “Oh, twenty to forty tons to the acre——” He shook his head in slow Dutch opposition. “—but if you’ll let me use humus I won’t need that much. Let me try it, Pervus. Let me try.”