|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 40
`She go with.' Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about nervously
in the dust.
`Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help me
cut my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good morning.
By the way, Mrs. Shimerda,' he said as he turned up the path, `I think we
may as well call it square about the cow.'
She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing that she did not
understand, grandfather turned back. `You need not pay me anything more;
no more money. The cow is yours.'
`Pay no more, keep cow?' she asked in a bewildered tone, her narrow eyes
snapping at us in the sunlight.
`Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow.' He nodded.
Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and, crouching down beside
grandfather, she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had ever been
so much embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that
seemed to bring the Old World very close.
We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: `I expect she thought we had
come to take the cow away for certain, Jim. I wonder if she wouldn't have
scratched a little if we'd laid hold of that lariat rope!'
Our neighbours seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday Mrs.
Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted. She
presented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, `Now you not come
any more for knock my Ambrosch down?'
Jake laughed sheepishly. `I don't want to have no trouble with Ambrosch.
If he'll let me alone, I'll let him alone.'
`If he slap you, we ain't got no pig for pay the fine,' she said
insinuatingly.
Jake was not at all disconcerted. `Have the last word ma'm,' he said
cheerfully. `It's a lady's privilege.'
XIX
JULY CAME ON with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains of
Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if we
could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a
faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured cornfields where the feathered
stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the Missouri
to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a
thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that were
ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. The cornfields were far
apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took a
clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's to foresee that they would
enlarge and multiply until they would be, not the Shimerdas' cornfields, or
Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields; that their yield would be one of
the great economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie all
the activities of men, in peace or war.
The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night, secured
the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little to fear
from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the wheatfields that
they did not notice the heat--though I was kept busy carrying water for
them--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to do in the kitchen that
they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another. Each
morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Antonia went with me up to
the garden to get early vegetables for dinner. Grandmother made her wear a
sunbonnet, but as soon as we reached the garden she threw it on the grass
and let her hair fly in the breeze. I remember how, as we bent over the
pea-vines, beads of perspiration used to gather on her upper lip like a
little moustache.
`Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!' she used to sing
joyfully. `I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I
like to be like a man.' She would toss her head and ask me to feel the
muscles swell in her brown arm.
We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsive that
one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans.
Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Antonia worked for
us.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|