So Big by Edna Ferber (read books for money .txt) 📕

Pool took his pipe from his mouth, blew a thin spiral, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Regular fertilizer is⁠—regular fertilizer.”

Jakob Hoogendunk nodded his solemn confirmation of this.

“What’s in it?” persisted Selina.

Pool waved a huge red hand as though to waft away this troublesome insect. He looked at Maartje. But Maartje was slamming about her work. Geertje and Jozina were absorbed in some game of their own behind the stove. Roelf, at the table, sat reading, one slim hand, chapped and gritty with rough work, outspread on the cloth. Selina noticed, without knowing she noticed, that the fingers were long, slim, and the broken nails thin and fine. “But what’s in it?” she said again. Suddenly life in the kitchen hung suspended. The two men frowned. Maartje half turned from her dishpan. The two little girls peered out from behind the stove. Roelf looked up from his book. Even the collie, lying in front of the stove half asleep, suddenly ran his tongue out, winked one eye. But Selina, all sociability, awaited her answer. She could not know that in High Prairie women did not brazenly intrude thus on men’s weighty conversation. The men looked at her, unanswering. She began to feel a little uncomfortable. The boy Roelf rose and went to the cupboard in the kitchen corner. He took down a large green-bound book, and placed it in Selina’s hand. The book smelled terribly. Its covers were greasy with handling. On the page margins a brown stain showed the imprint of fingers. Roelf pointed at a page. Selina followed the line with her eye.

Good Basic Fertilizer for Market-Garden Crops.

Then, below:

Nitrate of soda.

Ammonium sulfate.

Dried blood.

Selina shut the book and handed it back to Roelf, gingerly. Dried blood! She stared at the two men. “What does it mean by dried blood?”

Klaas answered stubbornly, “Dried blood is dried blood. You put in the field dried blood and it makes grow. Cabbages, onions, squash.” At sight of her horrified face he grinned. “Well, cabbages is anyway beautiful, huh?” He rolled a facetious eye around at Jakob. Evidently this joke was going to last him the winter.

Selina stood up. She wasn’t annoyed; but she wanted, suddenly, to be alone in her room⁠—in the room that but an hour before had been a strange and terrifying chamber with its towering bed, its chill drum, its ghostly bride’s chest. Now it had become a refuge, snug, safe, infinitely desirable. She turned to Mrs. Pool. “I⁠—I think I’ll go up to my room. I’m very tired. The ride, I suppose. I’m not used⁠ ⁠…” Her voice trailed off.

“Sure,” said Maartje, briskly. She had finished the supper dishes and was busy with a huge bowl, flour, a baking board. “Sure go up. I got my bread to set yet and what all.”

“If I could have some hot water⁠—”

“Roelf! Stop once that reading and show school teacher where is hot water. Geertje! Jozina! Never in my world did I see such.” She cuffed a convenient pigtail by way of emphasis. A wail arose.

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Don’t bother.” Selina was in a sort of panic now. She wanted to be out of the room. But the boy Roelf, with quiet swiftness, had taken a battered tin pail from its hook on the wall, had lifted an iron slab at the back of the kitchen stove. A mist of steam arose. He dipped the pail into the tiny reservoir thus revealed. Then, as Selina made as though to take it, he walked past her. She heard him ascending the wooden stairway. She wanted to be after him. But first she must know the name of the book over which he had been poring. But between her and the book outspread on the table were Pool, Hoogendunk, dog, pigtails, Maartje. She pointed with a determined forefinger. “What’s that book Roelf was reading?”

Maartje thumped a great ball of dough on the baking board. Her arms were white with flour. She kneaded and pummelled expertly. “Woorden boek.”

Well. That meant nothing. Woorden boek. Woorden b⁠—Dimly the meaning of the Dutch words began to come to her. But it couldn’t be. She brushed past the men in the tipped-back chairs, stepped over the collie, reached across the table. Woorden⁠—word. Boek⁠—book. Word book. “He’s reading the dictionary!” Selina said, aloud. “He’s reading the dictionary!” She had the horrible feeling that she was going to laugh and cry at once; hysteria.

Mrs. Pool glanced around. “School teacher he gave it to Roelf time he quit last year for spring planting. A word book. In it is more as a hundred thousand words, all different.”

Selina flung a good night over her shoulder and made for the stairway. He should have all her books. She would send to Chicago for books. She would spend her thirty dollars a month buying books for him. He had been reading the dictionary!

Roelf had placed the pail of hot water on the little washstand, and had lighted the glass lamp. He was intent on replacing the glass chimney within the four prongs that held it firm. Downstairs, in the crowded kitchen, he had seemed quite the man. Now, in the yellow lamplight, his profile sharply outlined, she saw that he was just a small boy with tousled hair. About his cheeks, his mouth, his chin one could even see the last faint traces of soft infantile roundness. His trousers, absurdly cut down from a man’s pair by inexpert hands, hung grotesquely about his slim shanks.

“He’s just a little boy,” thought Selina, with a quick pang. He was about to pass her now, without glancing at her, his head down. She put out her hand; touched his shoulder. He looked up at her, his face startlingly alive, his eyes blazing. It came to Selina that until now she had not heard him speak. Her hand pressed the thin stuff of his coat sleeve.

“Cabbages⁠—fields of cabbages⁠—what you said⁠—they are beautiful,” he stammered. He