Читать книгу Plowing On Sunday - Sterling North - Страница 11

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"You're a jinx," Gus told Early Ann as he stood beside her in the lamp light helping with the dishes. "Nothing but rain since the night you came. Never knew it to fail. That's what comes of having a strange girl on the farm."

"I ain't a strange girl," said Early Ann. "I certainly ain't as strange as you are. You're the strangest guy I ever seen."

"All Gundersons have got faces like mine," said Gus sadly.

"You ain't homely," said Early Ann. "You're awful handsome. Can you tango or sing,'You Great Big Beautiful Doll'?"

"I can't sing nothing," Gus said. "Can't carry a tune worth a cent. Stud says maybe I could sing better if I had my tonsils cut."

Early Ann giggled. She looked up with flashing eyes at the dour hired man and winked wickedly. She giggled again.

"You ought to see the picture postcards I got and the bon bon boxes, and the dance programs with silk tassels." (How she wished she did have these lovely, unattainable things!) "I bet I could teach you how to do the Castle Walk."

"Not me," said Gus. "No you don't." He cast an apprehensive glance at the girl and all but let a tureen slip out of his hands.

"You bust that tureen and I'll run you out of the kitchen with a broom," said Early Ann.

"My, my!" said Gus. "You're a wild woman, ain't you?"

"You bet I'm wild." She tossed her shining curls in the lamp light and added a kettle to the gleaming row of copper vessels hanging along the wall. "I used to bite like everything when I was a little girl."

"Let's see your teeth," said the hired man.

She flashed her white teeth, then opened wide her pretty mouth.

"Yep, you're a biter," Gus said. "But you ain't a day over seventeen by the looks of your molars."

"You don't know anything about girls," said Early Ann. "All you know about is horses."

From the other room came the voice of Sarah reading to Stanley by lamp light. Her voice was sweet, but particularly colorless this evening.

"Where'd you come from anyway?" Gus wanted to know. "And who are your folks? There ain't no Shermans in Brailsford Junction."

"None of your beeswax," the girl said firmly. "It's none of your beeswax where I came from."

"Not that I care," said Gus. "Not that I'm curious. Ishkabibble! I should worry."

"Oh, no. You ain't curious. You just got your tongue hanging out and your eyes popping, that's all. You're just running around like a couple of strange new dogs. You ain't curious."

"It ain't nice for a girl to talk the way you talk," said Gus. "It ain't proper for a girl to talk about dogs like that."

"I wasn't talking about dogs, I was talking about you," Early Ann said.

"Don't you ever want to be a lady, Early Ann? Don't you ever want to ride in a hansom cab or a limousine, with ostrich plumes in your hat, and a parasol? Don't you ever want to learn how to be sweet and talk nice like Sarah Brailsford?"

"She's lovely," said Early Ann with a sigh. "I sure wish I could be like Mrs. Brailsford. But I got a tongue like a little snake. I can't help what my tongue says.... Sure I want to be a lady and ride in a limousine. I want to be as graceful as Irene Castle, and dance like an angel, and have a house with swell brass beds and fumed oak mission furniture like you see in the Hartman catalogue, and a big cut-glass dish for the center of my table, and real lace curtains, and a new Ford with a Disco self-starter and...."

"Gee whiz, you must be figurin' on marrying a millionaire," Gus said.

"I want things," the girl said. "All I've had all my life is work, work, work."

Her fervor had flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes until the vision of young loveliness before him made Gus forget that he was a woman-hater. He wished he were a good-looking young fellow with some money. She'd get everything she wanted soon enough.

"You better not let Temperance Crandall hear you talk like that," warned Gus. "She'd tell everybody from Stoughton to Fort Atkinson."

"What does she look like?" Early Ann asked with excitement. "Has she got a long scraggly neck and a raggedy black parasol, and a black shawl, and does she wear glasses?"

"That's her," said Gus.

"Let me get my fingers around that hag's neck," said Early Ann.

"You certainly do talk rough," said the hired man. "I wouldn't want to meet you alone somewhere on a dark night."

"She was over here today telling tales about me," said Early Ann. "They shut the door and I was too proud to listen. She's just a.... Oh, Gus, she's just a nasty old busy-body. Mrs. Brailsford came out in the kitchen as white as a ghost after she left and asked for the camphor."

"There's something mysterious about you," said Gus. "I knew it from the night you came."

"It's just talk," said Early Ann. "They don't know a thing. There's nothing in my life to be ashamed of.... But it seems like old ladies just can't leave a girl alone. There's nobody in my past who...."

Early Ann broke off abruptly in the middle of her sentence. Her eyes grew large and the terror crept down her cheeks and caught at the comers of her mouth. She started to scream, then bit her knuckles and with great deliberation turned away from the apparition at the window-pane. By the time Gus had rushed out into the yard no one was to be seen and the starlit night was silent and empty.

In the parlor Sarah still read to Stanley, unaware of anything beyond her own circle of lamp light. But as Early Ann listened in the throbbing stillness she heard the older woman falter and stop. Then she heard quiet weeping.

"Why ... what are you crying about, Mother?" she heard Stanley ask.

"Nothing, nothing at all," Sarah said. "I—I guess I'm just tired, that's all."