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

it round her waist with a conscious air. Marie drew back and threw up her hands, exclaiming, “Oh, what a beauty! I’ve never seen this one before, have I, Mrs. Lee?”

The old woman giggled and ducked her head. “No, yust las’ night I ma‑ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa‑ash out, no fade. My sister send from Sveden. I yust‑a ta‑ank you like dis.”

Marie ran to the door again. “Come in, Alexandra. I have been looking at Mrs. Lee’s apron. Do stop on your way home and show it to Mrs. Hiller. She’s crazy about cross-stitch.”

While Alexandra removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Lee went out to the kitchen and settled herself in a wooden rocking chair by the stove, looking with great interest at the table, set for three, with a white cloth, and a pot of pink geraniums in the middle. “My, a‑an’t you gotta fine plants; such‑a much flower. How you keep from freeze?”

She pointed to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias and geraniums.

“I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Lee, and when it’s very cold I put them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I only put newspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me for fussing, but when they don’t bloom he says, ‘What’s the matter with the darned things?’⁠—What do you hear from Carl, Alexandra?”

“He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose I won’t hear any more until spring. Before he left California he sent me a box of orange flowers, but they didn’t keep very well. I have brought a bunch of Emil’s letters for you.” Alexandra came out from the sitting room and pinched Marie’s cheek playfully. “You don’t look as if the weather ever froze you up. Never have colds, do you? That’s a good girl. She had dark red cheeks like this when she was a little girl, Mrs. Lee. She looked like some queer foreign kind of a doll. I’ve never forgot the first time I saw you in Mieklejohn’s store, Marie, the time father was lying sick. Carl and I were talking about that before he went away.”

“I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you going to send Emil’s Christmas box?”

“It ought to have gone before this. I’ll have to send it by mail now, to get it there in time.”

Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket. “I knit this for him. It’s a good color, don’t you think? Will you please put it in with your things and tell him it’s from me, to wear when he goes serenading.”

Alexandra laughed. “I don’t believe he goes serenading much. He says in one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to be very beautiful, but that don’t seem to me very warm praise.”

Marie tossed her head. “Emil can’t fool me. If he’s bought a guitar, he goes serenading. Who wouldn’t, with all those Spanish girls dropping flowers down from their windows! I’d sing to them every night, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Lee?”

The old lady chuckled. Her eyes lit up as Marie bent down and opened the oven door. A delicious hot fragrance blew out into the tidy kitchen. “My, somet’ing smell good!” She turned to Alexandra with a wink, her three yellow teeth making a brave show, “I ta‑ank dat stop my yaw from ache no more!” she said contentedly.

Marie took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with stewed apricots, and began to dust them over with powdered sugar. “I hope you’ll like these, Mrs. Lee; Alexandra does. The Bohemians always like them with their coffee. But if you don’t, I have a coffeecake with nuts and poppy seeds. Alexandra, will you get the cream jug? I put it in the window to keep cool.”

“The Bohemians,” said Alexandra, as they drew up to the table, “certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than any other people in the world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at the church supper that she could make seven kinds of fancy bread, but Marie could make a dozen.”

Mrs. Lee held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown thumb and forefinger and weighed it critically. “Yust like‑a fedders,” she pronounced with satisfaction. “My, a‑an’t dis nice!” she exclaimed as she stirred her coffee. “I yust ta‑ake a liddle yelly now, too, I ta‑ank.”

Alexandra and Marie laughed at her forehandedness, and fell to talking of their own affairs. “I was afraid you had a cold when I talked to you over the telephone the other night, Marie. What was the matter, had you been crying?”

“Maybe I had,” Marie smiled guiltily. “Frank was out late that night. Don’t you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when everybody has gone away?”

“I thought it was something like that. If I hadn’t had company, I’d have run over to see for myself. If you get downhearted, what will become of the rest of us?” Alexandra asked.

“I don’t, very often. There’s Mrs. Lee without any coffee!”

Later, when Mrs. Lee declared that her powers were spent, Marie and Alexandra went upstairs to look for some crochet patterns the old lady wanted to borrow. “Better put on your coat, Alexandra. It’s cold up there, and I have no idea where those patterns are. I may have to look through my old trunks.” Marie caught up a shawl and opened the stair door, running up the steps ahead of her guest. “While I go through the bureau drawers, you might look in those hatboxes on the closet shelf, over where Frank’s clothes hang. There are a lot of odds and ends in them.”

She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Alexandra went into the clothes closet. Presently she came back, holding a slender elastic yellow stick in her hand.

“What in the world is this, Marie? You don’t mean to tell me Frank ever carried such a thing?”

Marie blinked at it with astonishment and sat down on the floor. “Where did you find it? I didn’t know he had kept it. I haven’t