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 “I didn’t do so good this time,” Jan explained, “on account I didn’t get no right place in the market.”

“You started early enough.”

“Well, they kind of crowded me out, like. They see I was a new hand and time I got the animals stabled and come back they had the wagon crowded out, like.”

Selina was standing in the kitchen doorway, Jan in the yard with the team. She turned her face toward the fields. An observant person (Jan Steen was not one of these) would have noted the singularly determined and clear-cut jaw-line of this drably calicoed farm woman.

“I’ll go myself Monday.”

Jan stared. “Go? Go where, Monday?”

“To market.”

At this seeming pleasantry Jan Steen smiled uncertainly, shrugged his shoulders, and was off to the barn. She was always saying things that didn’t make sense. His horror and unbelief were shared by the rest of High Prairie when on Monday Selina literally took the reins in her own slim work-scarred hands.

“To market!” argued Jan as excitedly as his phlegmatic nature would permit. “A woman she don't go to market. A woman”

“This woman does.” Selina had risen at three in the morning. Not only that, she had got Jan up, grumbling. Dirk had joined them in the fields at five. Together the three of them had pulled and bunched a wagon load. “Size them,” Selina ordered,