O Pioneers!: Part II

From the graveyard gate one can count a dozen gayly painted farmhouses; the gilded weather-vanes on the big red barns wink at each other across the green and brown and yellow fields.

The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the land make labor easy for men and beasts.

The air and the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if the one were the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.

The air and the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if the one were the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.

“Free-thinkers,” replied the young woman laconically.

She sat with the ease that belongs to persons of an essentially happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in adapting themselves to circumstances.

She made a droll face at Emil, who flushed.

South of the hill, in a low, sheltered swale, surrounded by a mulberry hedge, was the orchard, its fruit trees knee-deep in timothy grass.

When you go out of the house into the flower garden, there you feel again the order and fine arrangement manifest all over the great farm; in the fencing and hedging, in the windbreaks and sheds, in the symmetrical pasture ponds, planted with scrub willows to give shade to the cattle in fly-time.

Of the youngest girl, Signa, who has a pretty figure, mottled pink cheeks, and yellow hair, Alexandra is very fond, though she keeps a sharp eye upon her.

“To be sure, if the thing don't work, we'll have plenty of feed without it, indeed,” Barney conceded.

Ivar's bandy legs seemed to have grown shorter with years, and they were completely misfitted to his broad, thick body and heavy shoulders.

Look at Peter Kralik; when he was a boy, drinking out of a creek, he swallowed a snake, and always after that he could eat only such food as the creature liked, for when he ate anything else, it became enraged and gnawed him. When he felt it whipping about in him, he drank alcohol to stupefy it and get some ease for himself.

Alexandra had found that she could often break his fasts and long penances by talking to him and letting him pour out the thoughts that troubled him.

Alexandra had put herself into the hands of the Hanover furniture dealer, and he had conscientiously done his best to make her dining-room look like his display window.

She wears her yellow hair in a high pompadour, and is bedecked with rings and chains and “beauty pins.”

She could always find out more about Alexandra's domestic economy from the prattling maids than from Alexandra herself, and what she discovered she used to her own advantage with Lou.

The little girls were delighted at the advent of a stranger, some one from very far away, they knew by his clothes, his gloves, and the sharp, pointed cut of his dark beard.

Lou began to bluster, as he always did when he talked politics.

There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional.

All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things.

She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she didn't see the use of it.

Ever since she's come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contented to live and work in a world that's so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it's what goes on in the world that reconciles me.

On Wednesday morning Carl got up before it was light, and stole downstairs and out of the kitchen door just as old Ivar was making his morning ablutions at the pump.

Carl smiled a little ruefully. “All the same, I hope it hasn't been QUITE the same.”

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

When he heard his daughter's announcement, he first prudently corked his beer bottle and then leaped to his feet and had a turn of temper.

More than once the handsome gentleman was torn to pieces before the French class by an indignant nun.

She and Frank had been living there for five years when Carl Linstrum came back to pay his long deferred visit to Alexandra.

One of the Goulds was getting a divorce, and Frank took it as a personal affront.

He had an inexhaustible stock of stories about their crimes and follies, how they bribed the courts and shot down their butlers with impunity whenever they chose.

South of the apricot trees, cornering on the wheatfield, was Frank's alfalfa, where myriads of white and yellow butterflies were always fluttering above the purple blossoms.

Oh, ever so much; only he seems kind of staid and school-teachery.

Amedee was a little fellow, a year younger than Emil and much more boyish in appearance; very lithe and active and neatly made, with a clear brown and white skin, and flashing white teeth.

But Amedee had the zeal of the newly married, and he was not to be lightly shaken off.

“Honest and true, Emil, don't you want ANY girl? Maybe there's some young lady in Lincoln, now, very grand,”—Amedee waved his hand languidly before his face to denote the fan of heartless beauty,—“and you lost your heart up there. Is that it?”

Emil caught her and kissed her saucy mouth squarely, while she laughed and struggled and called, “'Medee! 'Medee!”

Lou felt that they were wandering from the point, and that in digression Alexandra might unnerve him.

He was a little ashamed for his sister, though he had tried not to show it. He felt that there was something indecorous in her proposal, and she did seem to him somewhat ridiculous.

I will go North at once. Instead of idling about in California all winter, I shall be getting my bearings up there.