章节正文
supper. When it was over, while the men warmed chilled feet and
fingers by the fire, Mary poured some syrup into a kettle, and
just as it "sugared off" she dipped streams of the amber
sweetness into cups of water. All of them ate it like big
children, and oh, but it was good! Two days more of the same work
ended sugar making, but for the next three days Dannie gathered
the rapidly diminishing sap for the vinegarbarrel.
Then there were more hens ready to set, water must be poured
hourly into the ash hopper to start the flow of lye for soap
making, and the smoke house must be gotten ready to cure the hams
and pickled meats, so that they would keep during warm weather.
The bluebells were pushing through the sod in a race with the
Easter and star flowers. One morning Mary aroused Jimmy with a
pull at his arm.
"Jimmy, Jimmy," she cried. "Wake up!"
"Do you mane, wake up, or get up?" asked Jimmy sleepily.
"Both," cried Mary. "The larks are here!"
A little later Jimmy shouted from the back door to the barn:
"Dannie, do you hear the larks?"
"Ye bet I do," answered Dannie. "Heard ane goin' over in the
nicht. How long is it now till the Kingfisher comes?"
"Just a little while," said Jimmy. "If only these March storms
would let up 'stid of down! He can't come until he can fish, you
know. He's got to have crabs and minnies to live on."
A few days later the green hylas began to pipe in the swamps, the
bullfrogs drummed among the pools in the bottom, the doves cooed
in the thickets, and the breath of spring was in the nostrils of
all creation, for the wind was heavy with the pungent odor of
catkin pollen. The spring flowers were two inches high. The
peonies and rhubarb were pushing bright yellow and red cones
through the earth. The old gander, leading his flock along the
Wabash, had hailed passing flocks bound northward until he was
hoarse; and the Brahma rooster had threshed the yellow dorkin
until he took refuge under the pig pen, and dare not stick out
his unprotected head.
The doors had stood open at supper time, and Dannie staid up
late, mending and oiling the harness. Jimmy sat by cleaning his
gun, for to his mortification he had that day missed killing a
crow which stole from the ash hopper the egg with which Mary
tested the strength of the lye. In a basket behind the kitchen
stove fifteen newly hatched yellow chickens, with brown stripes
on their backs, were peeping and nestling; and on wing the
killdeers cried half the night. At two o'clock in the morning
came a tap on the Malone's bedroom window.
"Dannie?" questioned Mary, half startled.
"Tell Jimmy!" cried Dannie's breathless voice outside. "Tell him
the Kingfisher has juist struck the river!"
Jimmy sat straight up in bed.
"Then glory be!" he cried. "To-morrow the Black Bass comes home!"
Chapter V
WHEN THE RAINBOW SET ITS ARCH IN THE SKY
"Where did Jimmy go?" asked Mary.
Jimmy had been up in time to feed the chickens and carry in the
milk, but he disappeared shortly after breakfast.
Dannie almost blushed as he answered: "He went to take a peep at
the river. It's going down fast. When it gets into its regular
channel, spawning will be over and the fish will come back to
their old places. We figure that the Black Bass will be home
to-day."
"When you go digging for bait," said Mary, "I wonder if the two
of you could make it convanient to spade an onion bed. If I had
it spaded I could stick the sets mesilf."
"Now, that amna fair, Mary," said Dannie. "We never went fishing
till the garden was made, and the crops at least wouldna suffer.
We'll make the beds, of course, juist as soon as they can be
spaded, and plant the seed, too."
"I want to plant the seeds mesilf," said Mary.
"And we dinna want ye should," replied Dannie. "All we want ye to
do, is to boss."
"But I'm going to do the planting mesilf," Mary was emphatic. "It
will be good for me to be in the sunshine, and I do enjoy working
in the dirt, so that for a little while I'm happy."
"If ye want to put the onions in the highest place, I should
think I could spade ane bed now, and enough fra lettuce and
radishes."
Dannie went after a spade, and Mary Malone laughed softly as she
saw that he also carried an old tin can. He tested the earth in
several places, and then called to her: "All right, Mary! Ground
in prime shape. Turns up dry and mellow. We will have the garden
started in no time."
He had spaded but a minute when Mary saw him run past the window,
leap the fence, and go hurrying down the path to the river. She
went to the door. At the head of the lane stood Jimmy, waving his
hat, and the fresh morning air carried his cry clearly: "Gee,
Dannie! Come hear him splash!"
Just why that cry, and the sight of Dannie Macnoun racing toward
the river, his spade lying on the upturned earth of her scarcely
begun onion bed, should have made her angry, it would be hard to
explain. He had no tackle or bait, and reason easily could have
told her that he would return shortly, and finish anything she
wanted done; but when was a lonely, disappointed woman ever
reasonable?
She set the dish water on the stove, wiped her hands on her
apron, and walking to the garden, picked up the spade and began
turning great pieces of earth. She had never done rough farm
work, such as women all about her did; she had little exercise
during the long, cold winter, and the first half dozen spadefuls
tired her until the tears of self-pity rolled.
"I wish there was a turtle as big as a wash tub in the river" she
sobbed, "and I wish it would eat that old Black Bass to the last
scale. And I'm going to take the shotgun, and go over to the
embankment, and poke it into the tunnel, and blow the old
Kingfisher through into the cornfield. Then maybe Dannie won't go
off too and leave me. I want this onion bed spaded right away, so
I do."
"Drop that! Idjit! What you doing?" yelled Jimmy.
"Mary, ye goose!" panted Dannie, as he came hurrying across the
yard. "Wha' do ye mean? Ye knew I'd be back in a minute! Jimmy
juist called me to hear the Bass splash. I was comin' back. Mary,
this amna fair."
Dannie took the spade from her hand, and Mary fled sobbing to the
house.
"What's the row?" demanded Jimmy of the suffering Dannie.
"I'd juist started spadin' this onion bed," explained Dannie. "Of
course, she thought we were going to stay all day."
"With no poles, and no bait, and no grub? She didn't think any
such a domn thing," said Jimmy. "You don't know women! She just
got to the place where it's her time to spill brine, and raise a
rumpus about something, and aisy brathin' would start her. Just
let her bawl it out, and thin--we'll get something dacent for
dinner."
Dannie turned a spadeful of earth and broke it open, and Jimmy
squatted by the can, and began picking out the angle worms.
"I see where we dinna fish much this summer," said Dannie, as he
waited. "And where we fish close home when we do, and where all
the work is done before we go."
"Aha, borrow me rose-colored specks!" cried Jimmy. "I don't see
anything but what I've always seen. I'll come and go as I please,
and Mary can do the same. I don't throw no `jeminy fit' every
time a woman acts the fool a little, and if you'd lived with one
fiftane years you wouldn't either. Of course we'll make the
garden. Wish to goodness it was a beer garden! Wouldn't I like to
plant a lot of hop seed and see rows of little green beer bottles
humpin' up the dirt. Oh, my! What all does she want done?"
Dannie turned another spadeful of earth and studied the premises,
while Jimmy gathered the worms.
"Palins all on the fence?" asked Dannie.
"Yep," said Jimmy.
"Well, the yard is to be raked."
"Yep."
"The flooer beds spaded."
"Yep."
"Stones around the peonies, phlox, and hollyhocks raised and
manure worked in. All the trees must be pruned, the bushes and
vines trimmed, and the gooseberries, currants, and raspberries
thinned. The strawberry bed must be fixed up, and the rhubarb and
asparagus spaded around and manured. This whole garden must be
made----"
"And the road swept, and the gate sandpapered, and the barn
whitewashed! Return to grazing, Nebuchadnezzar," said Jimmy. "We
do what's raisonable, and then we go fishin'. See?"
Three beds spaded, squared, and ready for seeding lay in the warm
spring sunshine before noon. Jimmy raked the yard, and Dannie
trimmed the gooseberries. Then he wheeled a barrel of swamp loam
for a flower bed by the cabin wall, and listened intently between
each shovelful he threw. He could not hear a sound. What was
more, he could not bear it. He went to Jimmy.
"Say, Jimmy," he said. "Dinna ye have to gae in fra a drink?"
"House or town?" inquired Jimmy sweetly.
"The house!" exploded Dannie. "I dinna hear a sound yet. Ye gae
in fra a drink, and tell Mary I want to know where she'd like the
new flooer bed she's been talking about."
Jimmy leaned the rake against a tree, and started.
"And Jimmy," said Dannie. "If she's quit crying, ask her what was
the matter. I want to know."
Jimmy vanished. Presently he passed Dannie where he worked.
"Come on," whispered Jimmy.
The bewildered Dannie followed. Jimmy passed the wood pile, and
pig pen, and slunk around behind the barn, where he leaned
against the logs and held his sides. Dannie stared at him.
"She says," wheezed Jimmy, "that she guesses SHE wanted to go and
hear the Bass splash, too!"
Dannie's mouth fell open, and then closed with a snap.
"Us fra the fool killer!" he said. "Ye dinna let her see ye
laugh?"
"Let her see me laugh!" cried Jimmy. "Let her see me laugh! I
told her she wasn't to go for a few days yet, because we were
sawin' the Kingfisher's stump up into a rustic sate for her, and
we were goin' to carry her out to it, and she was to sit there
and sew, and umpire the fishin', and whichiver bait she told the
Bass to take, that one of us would be gettin' it. And she was
pleased as anything, me lad, and now it's up to us to rig up some
sort of a dacint sate, and tag a woman along half the time. You
thick-tongued descindint of a bagpipe baboon, what did you sind
me in there for?"
"Maybe a little of it will tire her," groaned Dannie.
"It will if she undertakes to follow me," Jimmy said. "I know
where horse-weeds grow giraffe high."
Then they went back to work, and presently many savory odors
began to steal from the cabin. Whereat Jimmy looked at Dannie,
and winked an `I-told-you-so' wink. A garden grows fast under the
hands of two strong men really working, and by the time the first
slice of sugar-cured ham from the smoke house for that season
struck the sizzling skillet, and Mary very meekly called from the
back door to know if one of them wanted to dig a little horse
radish, the garden was almost ready for planting. Then they went
into the cabin and ate fragrant, thick slices of juicy fried ham,
seasoned with horse radish; fried eggs, freckled with the ham fat
in which they were cooked; fluffy mashed potatoes, with a little
well of melted butter in the center of the mound overflowing the
sides; raisin pie, soda biscuit, and their own maple syrup.
fingers by the fire, Mary poured some syrup into a kettle, and
just as it "sugared off" she dipped streams of the amber
sweetness into cups of water. All of them ate it like big
children, and oh, but it was good! Two days more of the same work
ended sugar making, but for the next three days Dannie gathered
the rapidly diminishing sap for the vinegarbarrel.
Then there were more hens ready to set, water must be poured
hourly into the ash hopper to start the flow of lye for soap
making, and the smoke house must be gotten ready to cure the hams
and pickled meats, so that they would keep during warm weather.
The bluebells were pushing through the sod in a race with the
Easter and star flowers. One morning Mary aroused Jimmy with a
pull at his arm.
"Jimmy, Jimmy," she cried. "Wake up!"
"Do you mane, wake up, or get up?" asked Jimmy sleepily.
"Both," cried Mary. "The larks are here!"
A little later Jimmy shouted from the back door to the barn:
"Dannie, do you hear the larks?"
"Ye bet I do," answered Dannie. "Heard ane goin' over in the
nicht. How long is it now till the Kingfisher comes?"
"Just a little while," said Jimmy. "If only these March storms
would let up 'stid of down! He can't come until he can fish, you
know. He's got to have crabs and minnies to live on."
A few days later the green hylas began to pipe in the swamps, the
bullfrogs drummed among the pools in the bottom, the doves cooed
in the thickets, and the breath of spring was in the nostrils of
all creation, for the wind was heavy with the pungent odor of
catkin pollen. The spring flowers were two inches high. The
peonies and rhubarb were pushing bright yellow and red cones
through the earth. The old gander, leading his flock along the
Wabash, had hailed passing flocks bound northward until he was
hoarse; and the Brahma rooster had threshed the yellow dorkin
until he took refuge under the pig pen, and dare not stick out
his unprotected head.
The doors had stood open at supper time, and Dannie staid up
late, mending and oiling the harness. Jimmy sat by cleaning his
gun, for to his mortification he had that day missed killing a
crow which stole from the ash hopper the egg with which Mary
tested the strength of the lye. In a basket behind the kitchen
stove fifteen newly hatched yellow chickens, with brown stripes
on their backs, were peeping and nestling; and on wing the
killdeers cried half the night. At two o'clock in the morning
came a tap on the Malone's bedroom window.
"Dannie?" questioned Mary, half startled.
"Tell Jimmy!" cried Dannie's breathless voice outside. "Tell him
the Kingfisher has juist struck the river!"
Jimmy sat straight up in bed.
"Then glory be!" he cried. "To-morrow the Black Bass comes home!"
Chapter V
WHEN THE RAINBOW SET ITS ARCH IN THE SKY
"Where did Jimmy go?" asked Mary.
Jimmy had been up in time to feed the chickens and carry in the
milk, but he disappeared shortly after breakfast.
Dannie almost blushed as he answered: "He went to take a peep at
the river. It's going down fast. When it gets into its regular
channel, spawning will be over and the fish will come back to
their old places. We figure that the Black Bass will be home
to-day."
"When you go digging for bait," said Mary, "I wonder if the two
of you could make it convanient to spade an onion bed. If I had
it spaded I could stick the sets mesilf."
"Now, that amna fair, Mary," said Dannie. "We never went fishing
till the garden was made, and the crops at least wouldna suffer.
We'll make the beds, of course, juist as soon as they can be
spaded, and plant the seed, too."
"I want to plant the seeds mesilf," said Mary.
"And we dinna want ye should," replied Dannie. "All we want ye to
do, is to boss."
"But I'm going to do the planting mesilf," Mary was emphatic. "It
will be good for me to be in the sunshine, and I do enjoy working
in the dirt, so that for a little while I'm happy."
"If ye want to put the onions in the highest place, I should
think I could spade ane bed now, and enough fra lettuce and
radishes."
Dannie went after a spade, and Mary Malone laughed softly as she
saw that he also carried an old tin can. He tested the earth in
several places, and then called to her: "All right, Mary! Ground
in prime shape. Turns up dry and mellow. We will have the garden
started in no time."
He had spaded but a minute when Mary saw him run past the window,
leap the fence, and go hurrying down the path to the river. She
went to the door. At the head of the lane stood Jimmy, waving his
hat, and the fresh morning air carried his cry clearly: "Gee,
Dannie! Come hear him splash!"
Just why that cry, and the sight of Dannie Macnoun racing toward
the river, his spade lying on the upturned earth of her scarcely
begun onion bed, should have made her angry, it would be hard to
explain. He had no tackle or bait, and reason easily could have
told her that he would return shortly, and finish anything she
wanted done; but when was a lonely, disappointed woman ever
reasonable?
She set the dish water on the stove, wiped her hands on her
apron, and walking to the garden, picked up the spade and began
turning great pieces of earth. She had never done rough farm
work, such as women all about her did; she had little exercise
during the long, cold winter, and the first half dozen spadefuls
tired her until the tears of self-pity rolled.
"I wish there was a turtle as big as a wash tub in the river" she
sobbed, "and I wish it would eat that old Black Bass to the last
scale. And I'm going to take the shotgun, and go over to the
embankment, and poke it into the tunnel, and blow the old
Kingfisher through into the cornfield. Then maybe Dannie won't go
off too and leave me. I want this onion bed spaded right away, so
I do."
"Drop that! Idjit! What you doing?" yelled Jimmy.
"Mary, ye goose!" panted Dannie, as he came hurrying across the
yard. "Wha' do ye mean? Ye knew I'd be back in a minute! Jimmy
juist called me to hear the Bass splash. I was comin' back. Mary,
this amna fair."
Dannie took the spade from her hand, and Mary fled sobbing to the
house.
"What's the row?" demanded Jimmy of the suffering Dannie.
"I'd juist started spadin' this onion bed," explained Dannie. "Of
course, she thought we were going to stay all day."
"With no poles, and no bait, and no grub? She didn't think any
such a domn thing," said Jimmy. "You don't know women! She just
got to the place where it's her time to spill brine, and raise a
rumpus about something, and aisy brathin' would start her. Just
let her bawl it out, and thin--we'll get something dacent for
dinner."
Dannie turned a spadeful of earth and broke it open, and Jimmy
squatted by the can, and began picking out the angle worms.
"I see where we dinna fish much this summer," said Dannie, as he
waited. "And where we fish close home when we do, and where all
the work is done before we go."
"Aha, borrow me rose-colored specks!" cried Jimmy. "I don't see
anything but what I've always seen. I'll come and go as I please,
and Mary can do the same. I don't throw no `jeminy fit' every
time a woman acts the fool a little, and if you'd lived with one
fiftane years you wouldn't either. Of course we'll make the
garden. Wish to goodness it was a beer garden! Wouldn't I like to
plant a lot of hop seed and see rows of little green beer bottles
humpin' up the dirt. Oh, my! What all does she want done?"
Dannie turned another spadeful of earth and studied the premises,
while Jimmy gathered the worms.
"Palins all on the fence?" asked Dannie.
"Yep," said Jimmy.
"Well, the yard is to be raked."
"Yep."
"The flooer beds spaded."
"Yep."
"Stones around the peonies, phlox, and hollyhocks raised and
manure worked in. All the trees must be pruned, the bushes and
vines trimmed, and the gooseberries, currants, and raspberries
thinned. The strawberry bed must be fixed up, and the rhubarb and
asparagus spaded around and manured. This whole garden must be
made----"
"And the road swept, and the gate sandpapered, and the barn
whitewashed! Return to grazing, Nebuchadnezzar," said Jimmy. "We
do what's raisonable, and then we go fishin'. See?"
Three beds spaded, squared, and ready for seeding lay in the warm
spring sunshine before noon. Jimmy raked the yard, and Dannie
trimmed the gooseberries. Then he wheeled a barrel of swamp loam
for a flower bed by the cabin wall, and listened intently between
each shovelful he threw. He could not hear a sound. What was
more, he could not bear it. He went to Jimmy.
"Say, Jimmy," he said. "Dinna ye have to gae in fra a drink?"
"House or town?" inquired Jimmy sweetly.
"The house!" exploded Dannie. "I dinna hear a sound yet. Ye gae
in fra a drink, and tell Mary I want to know where she'd like the
new flooer bed she's been talking about."
Jimmy leaned the rake against a tree, and started.
"And Jimmy," said Dannie. "If she's quit crying, ask her what was
the matter. I want to know."
Jimmy vanished. Presently he passed Dannie where he worked.
"Come on," whispered Jimmy.
The bewildered Dannie followed. Jimmy passed the wood pile, and
pig pen, and slunk around behind the barn, where he leaned
against the logs and held his sides. Dannie stared at him.
"She says," wheezed Jimmy, "that she guesses SHE wanted to go and
hear the Bass splash, too!"
Dannie's mouth fell open, and then closed with a snap.
"Us fra the fool killer!" he said. "Ye dinna let her see ye
laugh?"
"Let her see me laugh!" cried Jimmy. "Let her see me laugh! I
told her she wasn't to go for a few days yet, because we were
sawin' the Kingfisher's stump up into a rustic sate for her, and
we were goin' to carry her out to it, and she was to sit there
and sew, and umpire the fishin', and whichiver bait she told the
Bass to take, that one of us would be gettin' it. And she was
pleased as anything, me lad, and now it's up to us to rig up some
sort of a dacint sate, and tag a woman along half the time. You
thick-tongued descindint of a bagpipe baboon, what did you sind
me in there for?"
"Maybe a little of it will tire her," groaned Dannie.
"It will if she undertakes to follow me," Jimmy said. "I know
where horse-weeds grow giraffe high."
Then they went back to work, and presently many savory odors
began to steal from the cabin. Whereat Jimmy looked at Dannie,
and winked an `I-told-you-so' wink. A garden grows fast under the
hands of two strong men really working, and by the time the first
slice of sugar-cured ham from the smoke house for that season
struck the sizzling skillet, and Mary very meekly called from the
back door to know if one of them wanted to dig a little horse
radish, the garden was almost ready for planting. Then they went
into the cabin and ate fragrant, thick slices of juicy fried ham,
seasoned with horse radish; fried eggs, freckled with the ham fat
in which they were cooked; fluffy mashed potatoes, with a little
well of melted butter in the center of the mound overflowing the
sides; raisin pie, soda biscuit, and their own maple syrup.
- kettle [´ketl]
n.水壶 (初中英语单词) - breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- creation [kri´eiʃən] n.创作；作品；创造 (初中英语单词)
- refuge [´refju:dʒ] v.&n.避难(所)；庇护 (初中英语单词)
- harness [´hɑ:nis] vt.上马具 n.马具 (初中英语单词)
- shortly [´ʃɔ:tli] ad.立刻，马上；不久 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- lonely [´ləunli] a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词)
- tunnel [´tʌnl] n.隧道 v.挖隧道 (初中英语单词)
- splash [splæʃ] v.&n.溅水声；涉水而进 (初中英语单词)
- suffering [´sʌfəriŋ] n.痛苦；灾害 (初中英语单词)
- goodness [´gudnis] n.优良；美德；精华 (初中英语单词)
- barrel [´bærəl] n.(琵琶)桶；圆筒 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- northward [´nɔ:θwəd] ad.&a.向北(的) n.北 (高中英语单词)
- breathless [´breθlis] a.屏息的 (高中英语单词)
- rainbow [´reinbəu] n.彩虹 (高中英语单词)
- lettuce [´letis] n.莴苣 (高中英语单词)
- mellow [´meləu] a.芳醇的 v.(使)成熟 (高中英语单词)
- tackle [´tækəl] n.用具；装置 vt.处理 (高中英语单词)
- turtle [´tə:tl] n.海龟；甲鱼 (高中英语单词)
- studied [´stʌdid] a.故意的；有计划的 (高中英语单词)
- strawberry [´strɔ:bəri] n.草莓 (高中英语单词)
- rustic [´rʌstik] a.田野的；质朴的 (高中英语单词)
- fragrant [´freigrənt] a.芳香的，芬芳的 (高中英语单词)
- biscuit [´biskit] n.饼干 (高中英语单词)
- vinegar [´vinigə] n.醋 (英语四级单词)
- gotten [´gɔtn] get的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
- rooster [´ru:stə] n.公鸡；雄鸟 (英语四级单词)
- intently [in´tentli] ad.专心地 (英语四级单词)
- whereat [weər´æt] ad.对于...；在这里 (英语四级单词)
- meekly [´mi:kli] ad.温顺地；卑恭屈节地 (英语四级单词)
- freckled [´frekld] a.有雀斑的，有斑点的 (英语四级单词)
- raisin [´reizən] n.(无核)葡萄干 (英语四级单词)
- pollen [´pɔlən] n.花粉 v.授粉给 (英语六级单词)
- emphatic [im´fætik] a.强调的；断然的 (英语六级单词)
- cornfield [´kɔ:nfi:ld] n.稻田；麦田；玉米田 (英语六级单词)
- fluffy [´flʌfi] a.绒毛似的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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