One of Ours by Willa Cather (best romance ebooks .TXT) 📕

femmes”) by the questions of curious strangers. Presently he gathered up his luggage, shook hands with his neighbour, and put on his hat⁠—the same old Stetson, with a gold cord and two hard tassels added to its conical severity. “I get off at this station and wait for the freight that goes down to Frankfort; the cottontail, we call it.”

The old man wished him a pleasant visit home, and the best of luck in days to come. Everyone in the car smiled at him as he stepped down to the platform with his suitcase in one hand and his canvas bag in the other. His old friend, Mrs. Voigt, the German woman, stood out in front of her restaurant, ringing her bell to announce that dinner was ready for travellers. A crowd of young boys stood about her on the sidewalk, laughing and shouting in disagreeable, jeering tones. As Claude approached, one of them snatched the bell from her hand, ran off across the tracks with it, and plunged into a cornfield. The other boys followed, and one of them shouted, “Don’t go in there to eat, soldier. She’s a German spy, and she’ll put ground glass in your dinner!”

Claude swept into the lunch room and threw his bags on the floor. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Voigt? Can I do anything for you?”

She was sitting on one of her own stools, crying piteously, her false frizzes awry. Looking up, she gave a little screech of recognition. “Oh, I tank Gott it was you, and no more trouble coming! You know I ain’t no spy nor nodding, like what dem boys say. Dem young fellers is dreadful rough mit me. I sell dem candy since dey was babies, an’ now dey turn on me like dis. Hindenburg, dey calls me, and Kaiser Bill!” She began to cry again, twisting her stumpy little fingers as if she would tear them off.

“Give me some dinner, ma’am, and then I’ll go and settle with that gang. I’ve been away for a long time, and it seemed like getting home when I got off the train and saw your squaw vines running over the porch like they used to.”

“Ya? You remember dat?” she wiped her eyes. “I got a potpie today, and green peas, chust a few, out of my own garden.”

“Bring them along, please. We don’t get anything but canned stuff in camp.”

Some railroad men came in for lunch. Mrs. Voigt beckoned Claude off to the end of the counter, where, after she had served her customers, she sat down and talked to him, in whispers.

“My, you look good in dem clothes,” she said patting his sleeve. “I can remember some wars, too; when we got back dem provinces what Napoleon took away from us, Alsace and Lorraine. Dem boys is passed de word to come and put tar on me some night, and I am skeered to go in my bet. I chust wrap in a quilt and sit in my old chair.”

“Don’t pay any attention to them. You don’t have trouble with the business people here, do you?”

“No-o, not troubles, exactly.” She hesitated, then leaned impulsively across the counter and spoke in his ear. “But it ain’t all so bad in de Old Country like what dey say. De poor people ain’t slaves, and dey ain’t ground down like what dey say here. Always de forester let de poor folks come into de wood and carry off de limbs dat fall, and de dead trees. Und if de rich farmer have maybe a liddle more manure dan he need, he let de poor man come and take some for his land. De poor folks don’t git such wages like here, but dey lives chust as comfortable. Und dem wooden shoes, what dey makes such fun of, is cleaner dan what leather is, to go round in de mud and manure. Dey don’t git so wet and dey don’t stink so.”

Claude could see that her heart was bursting with homesickness, full of tender memories of the faraway time and land of her youth. She had never talked to him of these things before, but now she poured out a flood of confidences about the big dairy farm on which she had worked as a girl; how she took care of nine cows, and how the cows, though small, were very strong⁠—drew a plough all day and yet gave as much milk at night as if they had been browsing in a pasture! The country people never had to spend money for doctors, but cured all diseases with roots and herbs, and when the old folks had the rheumatism they took “one of dem liddle jenny-pigs” to bed with them, and the guinea-pig drew out all the pain.

Claude would have liked to listen longer, but he wanted to find the old woman’s tormentors before his train came in. Leaving his bags with her, he crossed the railroad tracks, guided by an occasional teasing tinkle of the bell in the cornfield. Presently he came upon the gang, a dozen or more, lying in a shallow draw that ran from the edge of the field out into an open pasture. He stood on the edge of the bank and looked down at them, while he slowly cut off the end of a cigar and lit it. The boys grinned at him, trying to appear indifferent and at ease.

“Looking for anyone, soldier?” asked the one with the bell.

“Yes, I am. I’m looking for that bell. You’ll have to take it back where it belongs. You every one of you know there’s no harm in that old woman.”

“She’s a German, and we’re fighting the Germans, ain’t we?”

“I don’t think you’ll ever fight any. You’d last about ten minutes in the American army. You’re not our kind. There’s only one army in the world that wants men who’ll bully old women. You might get a job with them.”

The boys giggled. Claude beckoned impatiently. “Come along with that bell, kid.”

The boy rose slowly