son I love best in the world., I'd be lost—unhappy—without the farm. If the city creeps up on me here, as they predict it will, I don’t know what I shall do.”
But Dirk had a prediction of his own to make. “Chicago’ll never grow this way, with all those steel mills and hunkies to the south of us. The north side is going to be the place to live. It is already.”
“The place for whom?”
“For the people with money.”
She smiled then so that you saw the funny little wrinkle across her nose. “Well, then the south section of Chicago is going to be all right for us yet a while.”
“Just you wait till I'm successful. Then there'll be no more working for you.”
“What do you mean by ‘successful’, Sobig?” She had not called him that in years. But now the old nickname came to her tongue perhaps because they were speaking of his future, his success. “What do you mean by ‘successful’, Sobig?”
“Rich. Lots of money.”
“Oh, no, Dirk! No! That’s not success. Roelf—the thing Roelf does—that’s success.”
“Oh, well, if you have money enough you can buy the things he makes, and have ’em. That’s almost as good, isn’t it?”
Midwest University had sprung up almost literally overnight on the property that had been the site of the Midway Plaisance during the World’s Fair in Chicago in '93. One man’s millions had been the magic
