Abra works out what Aron wants

With Aron away at Stanford, Abra attaches herself to the rest of the Trasks, trusting Adam and loving Lee more than her own parents. She spends her afternoons in the kitchen stringing beans and reading out Aron's daily letters — lonesome, passionate, and, she comes to see, addressed to somebody else. She works out her theory aloud: Aron needed a mother more than Cal did, made her out of everything good he could imagine, and has dumped the invention on Abra, so that she is afraid of being caught getting angry or smelling bad. She would rather be herself. Then she asks Lee straight whether Mrs. Trask is alive. He refuses — he is a servant, old, tired and a coward, and will not put a finger in a human pie — and then answers: yes. Cal comes in grinning, repays Lee's five thousand with interest, and announces a Thanksgiving present for his father. Next day Abra asks Cal whether he goes to bad houses because he is bad, and says she is not good either.

Abra reasons her way to the truth about Aron unaided, using her father and a dish of turnips as evidence, which establishes her as the clearest-sighted person in the book. Lee's refusal to answer is given at length and abandoned in a single word, and the collapse costs him more than the refusal did. Cal's happiness sits in the same chapter as Abra's admission that she is not good.