FullReads

“Didn’t know but you had. I hear two or three of the Sand Lake boys are comm’. Left New Orleenes some time this week. Didn’t write nothin’ about Ed, but no news is good news in such cases, Mother always says.”

“Well, go put out yer team,” said Mrs. Gray, “an’ go’n bring me in some taters, an’, Sim, you go see if you c’n find some corn. Sadie, you put on the water to bile. Come now, hustle yer boots. , all o’ yeh. If I feed this yer crowd, we’ve got to have some raw materials. If y’ think I’m goin’ to feed yeh on pie—you’re just mightily mistaken.”

The children went off into the field, the girls put dinner on to boil, and then went to change their dresses and fix their hair.”Somebody might come,” they said.

“Land sakes, I hopenot! I don’t know where in time I’d set ’em, ‘less they’d eat at the second table,” Mrs. Gray laughed in pretended dismay.

The two older boys, who had served their time in the army, lay out on the grass before the house, and whittled and talked desultorily about the war and the crops, and planned buying a threshing machine. The older girls and Mrs. Smith helped enlarge the table and put on the dishes, talking all the time in that cheery, incoherent, and meaningful way a group of such women have,—a conversation to be taken for its spirit rather than for its letter, though Mrs. Gray at last got the ear of them all and dissertated at length on girls.

“Girls in love ain’ no use in the whole blessed week,” she said.”Sundays they’re a-lookin’ down the road, expectin’ he’ll come. Sunday afternoons they can’t think o’ nothin’ else, ’cause he’s here. Monday mornin’s they’re sleepy and kind o’ dreamy and slimpsy, and good f’r nothin’ on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday they git absent-minded, an’ begin to look off toward Sunday agin, an’ mope aroun’ and let the dishwater git cold, rtght under their noses. Friday they break dishes, and go off in the best room an’ snivel, an’ look out o’ the winder. Saturdays they have queer spurts o’ workin’ like all p’ssessed, an spurts o’ frizzin’ their hair. An’ Sunday they begin it all over agin.”

The girls giggled and blushed all through this tirade from their mother, their broad faces and powerful frames anything but suggestive of lackadaisical sentiment. But Mrs. Smith said:

“Now, Mrs. Gray, I hadn’t ought to stay to dinner. You’ve got—”

“Now you set right down! If any of them girls’ beaus comes, they’ll have to take what’s left, that’s all. They ain’t s’posed to have much appetite, nohow. No, you’re goin’ to stay if they starve, an’ they ain’t no danger o’ that.”

At one o’clock the long table was piled with boiled potatoes, cords of boiled corn on the cob, squash and pumpkin pies, hot biscuit, sweet pickles, bread and butter, and honey. Then one of the girls took down a conch shell from
a nail and, going to the door, blew a long, fine, free blast, that showed there was no weakness of lungs in her ample chest.

Then the children came out of the forest of corn, out of the creek, out of the loft of the barn, and out of the garden.

They comw to their feed f’r all the world jest like the pigs when y’ holler ‘poo-ee!’ See ’em scoot!” laughed Mrs. Gray, every wrinkle on her face shining with delight.

The men shut up their jackknives, and surrounded the horse trough to souse their faces in the cold, hard water, and in a few moments the table was filled with a merry crowd, and a row of wistful-eyed youngsters circled the kitchen wail, where they stood first on one leg and then on the other, in impatient hunger.