In the midst of the little hopeless community of beaten men and yellow
defeated women on the bank of the Mississippi River, the woman who had
become Hugh McVey's second mother and in whose veins flowed the blood of
the pioneers, felt herself undefeated and unbeatable. She and her husband
would, she felt, stay in the Missouri town for a while and then move on
to a larger town and a better position in life. They would move on and up
until the little fat man was a railroad president or a millionaire. It was
the way things were done. She had no doubt of the future. "Do everything
well," she said to her husband, who was perfectly satisfied with his
position in life and had no exalted notions as to his future. "Remember to
make your reports out neatly and clearly. Show them you can do perfectly
the task given you to do, and you will be given a chance at a larger task.
Some day when you least expect it something will happen. You will be called
up into a position of power. We won't be compelled to stay in this hole of
a place very long."
The ambitious energetic little woman, who had taken the son of the indolent
farm hand to her heart, constantly talked to him of her own people. Every
afternoon when her housework was done she took the boy into the front room
of the house and spent hours laboring with him over his lessons. She worked
upon the problem of rooting the stupidity and dullness out of his mind
as her father had worked at the problem of rooting the stumps out of the
Michigan land.
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