A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich

There are those who will say that the love story of Laura Deal and Allen Rinemiller ends here. But they who say it do not define love correctly. For though love has been ridiculed and disgraced, exchanged and bartered, dragged through the courts, and sold for thirty pieces of silver, the bright, steady glow of its fire still shines on the hearth-stones of countless homes,--the homes of which no one reads. For of what news value is the home from which there comes no tale of crime or breath of scandal? And of what dramatic importance is the average decent family going about its daily business?

In time the new house was finished on the site of the old, and any comparison is unfair to the old one which had been considered spacious and comfortable in an early day. The new farm home was of brick and tile. Its heat came up from the cellar, its lights came in from Omaha, its water came in through many pipes. Ice was frozen in its kitchen, food was cooked there without sign of match or fuel, dust from its floor was sucked up into bags and burned. Its coffee was percolated from a plug in the wall, its corn was popped by the same unseen force, its bells rung and its water heated. Laura sat at her desk and talked with friends in their homes. Machines in her immaculate basement helped her wash and iron. Heat regulators kept her warm in winter. Fans cooled her in summer. And symphony orchestras played for her while she worked. Allen touched a button at the house and flooded the barns with light. Blooded cattle were in his pastures. Two automobiles were in his garage. Auto trucks were under their shed. His fields were furrowed by a giant's plow, and cultivated with the latest type machine. A great combine, with a few turns of its iron hands, did the work of a dozen men. And there was much talk of farm relief.