He'll give me work in the house." "It looks like a good chance," said I.
"You know I don't know much about housework," said she; "poor as we've always been." "You showed me how to make good bread," I replied.
"I could do well for a poor man," said Rowena, looking at me rather sadly.

Then she waited quite a while for me to say something.
"Shall I go, Jake ?" she asked, looking up into my face.
"It looks like a good chance for all of you," I answered.
"I don't want to," said she, "I couldn't stay here, could I?
...

No, of course not!" So away went the Fewkeses with Buck Gowdy.

That is, Rowena went away with him in his buggy, and the rest of the family followed in a day or so with the cross old horse--now refreshed by my hay and grain, and the rest we had given him,--in their rickety one-horse wagon.

I remember how Rowena looked back at us, her hair blowing about her face which looked, just a thought, pale and big-eyed, as the Gowdy buggy went off like the wind, with Buck's arm behind the girl to keep her from bouncing out.
This day's work was not to cease in its influence on Iowa affairs for half a century, if ever.