Father would dress himself for court in a brightly coloured dhoti, a matching white shirt with an equally bright white turban and a neat black coat. The paraphernalia to court would include a cloth bundle containing court papers and a basket containing hot coffee with tumblers and plates for tiffin given by my mother or sisters-in-law. The younger advocates of his time were great admirers of my father and used to listen to him with rapt attention whenever he rose to address the court. His arguments were forceful, coherent, cogent, compulsive and conclusive. The arguments would go on till about lunchtime and even the English judge used to take down notes of his points. One client was particular that my father alone should argue his case. On the day my mother died, this case happened to be on the cause list. My mother was alive when my father left for court at 10 a.m. that morning and he had told my brother that he would return as soon as the case was over. Unfortunately, she died within an hour of his departure. With some difficulty, the news was conveyed through an advocate in court. My father, however, continued his arguments without showing any emotions. Only after concluding the case did he get back home to the room where my mother's body lay and stood in stoic silence.

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies (grasslands) with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon from many miles afar. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cooking stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar — except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trapdoor in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the ploughed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of long blades until they were the same gray colour to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.