The third spring of Henry's stay on the farm arrived. Henry went over his bank account, a respectable sum, made up of his earnings on the farm and a few ventures in cattle buying and selling.
"Well, father," he said one day, "I guess I'll be getting married."
"All right," his father said. "She's a good, capable girl, I guess. I'll give you that south forty, and you can have lumber enough from the timber lot to build a house when you get ready."
Apparently Henry had made up his mind to settle the matter. No doubt, behind the ardor he showed Clara there was an unconscious feeling that he had spent enough time in courtship; he was impatient to get back to his other interests, to have again an orderly, smooth routine of life, with margins of time for machinery.
In April he and Clara went up to Detroit and were married. A couple of weeks later they returned to Greenfield, Clara with plans for the new house on the south forty already sketched in a tablet in her suitcase; Henry with a bundle of mechanics trade journals, and the responsibility of caring for a wife.
"A wife helps a man more than any one else," he says to-day. And adds, with his whimsical twinkle, "she criticizes him more."
