he discussed plans with her and when he reported progress of the plans, as he did in May when he told her: "I owe Mr. Fuller just twenty thousand now."
"You've paid off five thousand!"
"I'll make it five more this year, if business holds."
In June, his mother died. He was at home for several days previous and he wrote Alice where he was, but when the end came he did not inform her until he was ready to return to Chicago when he wired her the bare fact and that he was returning.
She well knew the time of the evening train from Itanaca and she met him at the station with her car and drove him to her home.
When they were alone there, he related to her, "I had a long talk with mother, a few days ago, about what I ought to do. They used to think I ought to go into the ministry, you remember."
"Yes, I remember," said Alice.
"Father thinks so still. He's a literal person, but mother wasn't, so much. She was loyal to father, absolutely, but broader. She told me that years ago she'd given up the idea that I'd go into the ministry or missions or even that I ought to. She wanted me to know that, before she went; she wanted me to know that she trusted me to work out my own best usefulness for myself.
"That was a mighty big way of putting it up to me, wasn't it?"
He asked, "Do you remember that talk we had long ago, Alice—that talk which you said, at Rock Island, always marked the end of you and me? It was when I
