CHAPTER XVWELCOME GUESTS
We will pass over the first few years of Lissa’s pioneer life, only mentioning one or two experiences which, though common to that section of the country, brought terror and anxiety to the heart of our little bright-eyed woman. Again they experienced the sweeping of a prairie fire near them, when Nathan came expecting to find their home in ashes, and another hour when a blizzard drove them terrorstricken to their dug-out, where, during the long night, they listened to the shrieking and pounding of the elements, expecting every moment to have the roof torn from the house.
There had been seasons of famine and distress, too, when neighbors had been obliged to turn to each other for aid, and the higher and diviner attributes of mankind had shone forth as gold from the crucible, and others, alas! had been proven so encased in the rock of selfishness that when Famine’s gaunt wolf howled about they thought only of themselves and their own safety, and consoled their consciences by quoting, “Charity begins at home.�
But these trials had drawn the little community more closely together, and the habit of calling each other by the first name became general, showing the unity of feeling among them.
Nathan, owing to his winter employment, escapedthe privations common to many, and Mark, also, had not to depend upon the mutability of the seasons for a livelihood.
Lissa had grown fully in the enjoyment of her home; and in the company of her bright-eyed little daughter, who pattered about the house, adding to her joy as well as care, she realized the ideal life of a mother. What is it to her that away in the East the luxuries of life are magnified, and things unessential to her are there necessities?
She has enough to eat, enough to wear, so far as comfort demands; and the fashion periodical which is sent to her each month keeps her in touch with the outside world. She can fashion the simple fabrics which serve to replenish her wardrobe after the latest modes. She reads the daily papers, sent to her in bundles six or eight at a time, and is familiar with the doings of metropolitans. If the time shall ever come when she shall need to go back to city life she will be ready.
Look at her now as she steps to the door in anticipation of Nathan’s home-coming. Her shining ringlets hang about her fair face in the way her husband loves best to see them; her arched, short upper lip describes the Cupid’s bow over the full under one, and her large, luminous black eyes, gleaming with slumbering fires, look out upon the smooth, sunlit expanse before her. She is a beautiful and charming picture of a happy and contented wife.
A half hour later Nathan entered and greeted the little woman tenderly, while he noted with the eye of love the pallor of the upturned face.
“I am afraid the care of baby and all is getting to be too much for you again,� he said. “I must get Neoka back from the post to help you. I think she will prove more tractable, now the Quakers have had her in charge so long. I want you to get out more. You are getting to look too much like a cellar plant. Besides, we have visitors coming and I want you to have time to enjoy them.�
Lissa’s eyes dilated eagerly.
“O Nate, it can’t be—Who is it? Itcan’t be—mamma?�
“Yes, dear, and Donald.�
“Mamma and Donald? But how did they come together? Where are they? O Nate, I don’t understand!� And Lissa pressed her hand to her heart.
“There, there, dear. Don’t get excited. I’m afraid I’ve told you too suddenly. Your mother stopped with Alice to have me come on and let you know. They’ll be here after a little while. Donald is out tethering the ponies, and waiting, for the same reason.�
“O Nate, now I’m entirely happy!� And Lissa caught up the child and laughed and cried while she kissed it ecstatically.
“Hello, sis! Aren’t you embracing the wrong one? You might save a little for the rest of us.� Lissa looked up to see Donald’s laughing face framed in the doorway. She extended both hands to him. “O Don, I’m so happy, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!� she gasped, her tears mingling with her smiles.
“Well, Lissa, I don’t actually know which is themore becoming to you—perhaps both. I always did like April weather. You are fully as dazzling as a rainbow now. It was rather bad for us to come and surprise you, that’s a fact; but I knew you wouldn’t mind me, and Nathan tells me you didn’t receive your mother’s letter.�
“No, and I’m glad I didn’t. I could never have waited for her to get here; no,never! I should have started alone across the prairies, horseback, to meet her. But how changed you are, Don. You look so much taller and bigger, and—my!—so much older!�
“Ah, it’s the added wisdom of my college years,� replied Donald with assumed gravity. “That’s what ages a fellow. It’s the Greek and Latin that you see sticking out all over me that has changed me.�
Lissa looked up into the smiling eyes of this big brother and wondered if it was those four years of hard study that had so chiseled and thinned the boyish face of her remembrance.
“I suspect that mustache is responsible for some of the change,� she said aloud.
“So? Shall I shave it off? It’s an outgrowth ofcalculus.�
“No, you’re all right as you are. I’m not sure but you’re improved.�
“O, that morsel of flattery is sweet, at last, and I’ve been fishing for it so long,� said Donald, with an expansive sigh. “I rather expected you to say at once, ‘how much handsomer you’ve grown!’�
“I am very glad I did not say it,� said Lissa, with a grimace. “But I see mamma coming. Excuse me, Donald, I must run to meet her!� and Lissa,with all the abandon of a school-girl, ran down the path to meet the stately mother, whose tears were ready to mingle with those of her beloved child. And when, a few moments later, Lissa came in clinging fondly to the maternal arm, the crimson flush of excited pleasure in her cheeks, the intervening years seemed to have been stricken out and one saw but the girl of sixteen who so trustingly gave her future into Nathan’s care and bade good-by to Donald in his Iowa home.
But there is little Lucy to be shown to grandma, and kissed and commented upon, and the tea is cold, and the cakes in danger of being spoiled before Lissa is recalled to her duties as hostess.
“Ah, Donald, dear, I shall let you all starve, I am sure, before I can bring myself down to such mundane affairs as bread and butter again. How delightful this is. I didn’t know I was homesick before, but now I think I must have been. But how did you happen to be with mother, Don?� she babbled.
“Our meeting was ‘purely accidental,’ as the fiction writers say. I saw her at the station and heard her inquiring for a carriage to bring her out here, and so I made bold to introduce myself. Of course she saw at a glance the honesty in my face, and knew I was a confidence man—�
“Oh, oh!� cried Lissa.
“And I told her I was a poor navigator bound for the same harbor and we set sail together,� Donald concluded.
Mrs. Clyne nodded. “That is true, notwithstandingMr. Bartram’s rather mixed metaphor,� she said, smiling.
“Ah, how strangely it happened, and fortunately. And now you will spend the winter with us; and you, too, I hope, Donald.�
“I have to take charge of a surveying party for a few weeks. After that I may be back to spend some time here.�
“Ah, yes, I remember you are a civil engineer. You will enjoy the hunting in the winter on the buffalo grounds.�
“Not hunting buffalo, I hope. At the rate they are being slaughtered they will soon be extinct,� said Nathan.
“Never fear, Nathan, I’ve little taste that way. It’s too noble an animal,� replied Donald.
“Come, now, I have made new tea, and we will have supper. It’ssupperhere, mother, instead ofdinner, and I know you are all ravenously hungry after your long ride of twenty-five miles from the station.�
“It seems to me an extremely long distance to be from a railway,� said Mrs. Clyne, after they were seated around the table, where Lissa’s silver shone resplendent. “How did you happen to come so far from one when you bought?�
Nathan smiled.
“I took up the land first, believing at the time the line would run nearer, and it is only a question of time when it will do so.�
“I suppose this is a great farming country.�
“We have much to contend with here,� said Nathan.“The ground is rich, but has little depth. We are liable to have a wind-storm that will carry the land from one farm to another.�
“Free transportation and exchange of farms,� said Donald.
“Yes; again, we have a fine crop of grain or corn nearly in ear, when there will come a hot wind and sear the leaves like a fire. We are never quite sure, or able to prognosticate here for the future, whether we will have corn, beans, and potatoes to eat, beans and potatoes, or whether it will be beans alone.�
“And you sometimes have real fires,� said Mrs. Clyne. “I have worried about them ever since the one you wrote me about, which Lissa fought. How did you do it, dear?�
“Really, I don’t know. I was so frightened that I didn’t have time to think. The grass was not so high on this side of the river or I don’t know what might have happened.�
“Lissa aided in turning the fire. I doubt if it would have spared us otherwise,� said Nathan.
“I shall always believe it a real miracle that time,� said Lissa. “It was only a day or two before that that Nathan had brought the calves around to crop the grass before the house. Had it not been for that, it surely would have burned. And who inspired him to bring them just when he did?�
“I think you all learned something that time,� said Alice. “You have since followed Mark’s example and kept the grass cut around the house. But there’s always danger in the fall, when the weeds are high in the outlying fields.�
“When Mr. Elmer’s house was burned it was nearly as terrifying. Nathan was thirty-five miles from home, and men came across the fields and lighted back fires for me. The wind was driving the flames up from the south and burning corn-fields and houses by the way,� Lissa said.
“How dreadful! You sometimes have it very cold here also,� said Mrs. Clyne.
“Yes, but we are used to that, and our houses are warm. Don’t worry about that, mother.�
“Certainly not, I can stand it if you can, I am sure. But how are you off socially? Have you pleasant neighbors?�
“Yes, indeed, and neighbors are neighbors, here. We call each other by the first name,—that is, most of us do,—and we are not above borrowing from one another when necessary.�
“I should think not,� laughed Alice. “We have often loaned our dresses and shoes.�
“And that isn’t all.� And then the twain looked at each other and laughed again.
“I don’t see how you ever became accustomed to it, girls. You were brought up to such a different life,� Mrs. Clyne remarked.
“O, it’s easy, just as easy as learning to skate,� responded Lissa, not finding at hand any more suitable comparison. “It comes to one naturally in a little time.�
Mrs. Clyne shook her head. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t come to me. I’m too old.�
“O, now mother, don’t think that. You’ll really enjoy it. And we have some really nice peoplehere. The McClearys, for instance; and the Davitts and the Youngs and the Garretts. Then weknowevery one for miles away, and intimately.�
“Yes,� said Alice, “we know all the private affairs of each other. If Mrs. Garrett gets a new dress all the neighbors know of it, and if I have company to tea, or make plum butter, it is known from here to C——�
“Ah, it’s all beyond me,� Mrs. Clyne sighed.
“And when we visit one another we take our work along and stay to tea,� giggled Lissa, “whether we are invited or not.�
“And just think, mother, I have been in a carriage but once or twice since we came here. I always go horseback,� added Alice. “And Donald,—I’m sure you’ll allow me to follow our custom out here and call you so, as you are one of the family,—the young folks go ‘sparking’ out here, and—�
“And sit in the corner and hold each other’s hands,� put in Nathan.
“Whew, that sounds interesting. I’m booked for at least one winter here. Are the girls pretty?�
“Most assuredly, and there are heaps of them, as we say here. There are more girls than boys, for some reason. Really I don’t know of more than half a dozen marriageable youngmenin this section.�
“I suppose with so much land in sight they preempt a portion and marry to live upon, and secure it,� said Donald. “But who are the girls?�
“Well, there are the Pemberton twins, who look so exactly alike you could never tell which was which,� continued Alice.
“That sounds interesting! Two fair ones must be better than one. Shall I put a mem. in my note-book concerning them?�
“It will not be necessary. You will see them soon enough, and will rarely see one without the other. They are quite the rage, and have cropped yellow curls, and milky blue eyes.�
Donald lifted his eyebrows quizzically.
“Lissa is such a fine word photographist, one can see their very image,� he said.
“Come, Don, leave the women to their gossip and come with me,� said Nathan. “I want a history of the old home since you were here.� And the two men sauntered out into the night and the wonderful silence of the moonlit prairie.