At 12.30 dinner was announced from the door by Mrs. Blue and they all rose. It was one of those simple home feasts common to any intelligent farming family. There was a generous supply of fresh vegetables, green peas, new potatoes, new string beans. A steak had been secured from the itinerant butcher who served these parts and Mrs. Blue had made hot light biscuit. Eugene expressed a predilection for fresh buttermilk and they brought him a pitcherful, saying that as a rule it was given to the pigs; the children did not care for it. They talked and jested and he heard odd bits of information concerning people here and there--some farmer who had lost a horse by colic; some other farmer who was preparing to cut his wheat. There were frequent references to the three oldest sisters, who lived in other Wisconsin towns. Their children appeared to be numerous and fairly troublesome. They all came home frequently, it appeared, and were bound up closely with the interests of the family as a whole. "The more you know about the Blue family," observed Samuel to Eugene, who expressed surprise at the solidarity of interest, "the more you realize that they're a clan not a family. They stick together like glue." "That's a rather nice trait, I should say," laughed Eugene, who felt no such keen interest in his relatives. "Well, if you want to find out how the Blue family stick together just do something to one of them," observed Jake Doll, a neighbor who had entered. "That's sure true, isn't it, Sis," observed Samuel, who was sitting next to Angela, putting his hand affectionately on his sister's arm. Eugene noted the movement. She nodded her head affectionately. "Yes, we Blues all hang together." Eugene almost begrudged him his sister's apparent affection. Could such a girl be cut out of such an atmosphere--separated from it completely, brought into a radically different world, he wondered. Would she understand him; would he stick by her. He smiled at Jotham and Mrs. Blue and thought he ought to, but life was strange. You never could tell what might happen.