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 You know that. You get the wrong angle on things, stuck out here on this little farm. Why don’t you come into town and take a little place and sell the farm?”

“Live with you, you mean?” Pure mischievousness.

“Oh, no. You wouldn’t like that,” hastily. “Besides, I’d never be there. At the office all day, and out somewhere in the evening.”

“When do you do your reading, Dirk?”

“Why—uh”

She sat up in bed, looking down at the thin end of her braid as she twined it round and round her finger. “Dirk, what is this you sell in that mahogany office of yours? I never did get the hang of it.”

“Bonds, Mother. You know that perfectly well.”

“Bonds.” She considered this a moment. “Are they hard to sell? Who buys them?”

“That depends. Everybody buys them—that is”

“I don’t. I suppose because whenever I had any money it went back into the farm for implements, or repairs, or seed, or stock, or improvements. That’s always the way with a farmer—even on a little truck farm like this.” She pondered again a moment. He fidgeted, yawned. “Dirk DeJong—Bond Salesman.”

“The way you say it, Mother, it sounds like a low criminal pursuit.”

“Dirk, do you know sometimes I actually think that if you had stayed here on the farm”