O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (ebook reader with internet browser .TXT) 📕

have.” He paused to give Alexandra his hand as she stepped over the stile. “Are you the least bit disappointed in our coming together again?” he asked abruptly. “Is it the way you hoped it would be?”

Alexandra smiled at this. “Only better. When I’ve thought about your coming, I’ve sometimes been a little afraid of it. You have lived where things move so fast, and everything is slow here; the people slowest of all. Our lives are like the years, all made up of weather and crops and cows. How you hated cows!” She shook her head and laughed to herself.

“I didn’t when we milked together. I walked up to the pasture corners this morning. I wonder whether I shall ever be able to tell you all that I was thinking about up there. It’s a strange thing, Alexandra; I find it easy to be frank with you about everything under the sun except⁠—yourself!”

“You are afraid of hurting my feelings, perhaps.” Alexandra looked at him thoughtfully.

“No, I’m afraid of giving you a shock. You’ve seen yourself for so long in the dull minds of the people about you, that if I were to tell you how you seem to me, it would startle you. But you must see that you astonish me. You must feel when people admire you.”

Alexandra blushed and laughed with some confusion. “I felt that you were pleased with me, if you mean that.”

“And you’ve felt when other people were pleased with you?” he insisted.

“Well, sometimes. The men in town, at the banks and the county offices, seem glad to see me. I think, myself, it is more pleasant to do business with people who are clean and healthy-looking,” she admitted blandly.

Carl gave a little chuckle as he opened the Shabatas’ gate for her. “Oh, do you?” he asked dryly.

There was no sign of life about the Shabatas’ house except a big yellow cat, sunning itself on the kitchen doorstep.

Alexandra took the path that led to the orchard. “She often sits there and sews. I didn’t telephone her we were coming, because I didn’t want her to go to work and bake cake and freeze ice-cream. She’ll always make a party if you give her the least excuse. Do you recognize the apple trees, Carl?”

Linstrum looked about him. “I wish I had a dollar for every bucket of water I’ve carried for those trees. Poor father, he was an easy man, but he was perfectly merciless when it came to watering the orchard.”

“That’s one thing I like about Germans; they make an orchard grow if they can’t make anything else. I’m so glad these trees belong to someone who takes comfort in them. When I rented this place, the tenants never kept the orchard up, and Emil and I used to come over and take care of it ourselves. It needs mowing now. There she is, down in the corner. Maria‑a‑a!” she called.

A recumbent figure started up from the grass and came running toward them through the flickering screen of light and shade.

“Look at her! Isn’t she like a little brown rabbit?” Alexandra laughed.

Maria ran up panting and threw her arms about Alexandra. “Oh, I had begun to think you were not coming at all, maybe. I knew you were so busy. Yes, Emil told me about Mr. Linstrum being here. Won’t you come up to the house?”

“Why not sit down there in your corner? Carl wants to see the orchard. He kept all these trees alive for years, watering them with his own back.”

Marie turned to Carl. “Then I’m thankful to you, Mr. Linstrum. We’d never have bought the place if it hadn’t been for this orchard, and then I wouldn’t have had Alexandra, either.” She gave Alexandra’s arm a little squeeze as she walked beside her. “How nice your dress smells, Alexandra; you put rosemary leaves in your chest, like I told you.”

She led them to the northwest corner of the orchard, sheltered on one side by a thick mulberry hedge and bordered on the other by a wheat field, just beginning to yellow. In this corner the ground dipped a little, and the bluegrass, which the weeds had driven out in the upper part of the orchard, grew thick and luxuriant. Wild roses were flaming in the tufts of bunchgrass along the fence. Under a white mulberry tree there was an old wagon seat. Beside it lay a book and a workbasket.

“You must have the seat, Alexandra. The grass would stain your dress,” the hostess insisted. She dropped down on the ground at Alexandra’s side and tucked her feet under her. Carl sat at a little distance from the two women, his back to the wheat field, and watched them. Alexandra took off her shade hat and threw it on the ground. Marie picked it up and played with the white ribbons, twisting them about her brown fingers as she talked. They made a pretty picture in the strong sunlight, the leafy pattern surrounding them like a net; the Swedish woman so white and gold, kindly and amused, but armored in calm, and the alert brown one, her full lips parted, points of yellow light dancing in her eyes as she laughed and chattered. Carl had never forgotten little Marie Tovesky’s eyes, and he was glad to have an opportunity to study them. The brown iris, he found, was curiously slashed with yellow, the color of sunflower honey, or of old amber. In each eye one of these streaks must have been larger than the others, for the effect was that of two dancing points of light, two little yellow bubbles, such as rise in a glass of champagne. Sometimes they seemed like the sparks from a forge. She seemed so easily excited, to kindle with a fierce little flame if one but breathed upon her. “What a waste,” Carl reflected. “She ought to be doing all that for a sweetheart. How awkwardly things come about!”

It was not very long before Marie sprang up out of