Читать книгу Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865 онлайн

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The young people complain about my taking so much time to write, but since I have commenced I cannot stop. I am thinking all the time about what things are worth recording.

(A call to dinner.)

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After dinner mother washes the dishes and makes all the arrangements she can for an early breakfast. She thinks I am another “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” so she is perfectly willing to do the work in the evening and let me write. Oh, the unselfishness of mothers. I do my share, of course, mornings, and at noon, but evenings I only make the beds in both wagons.

We have white sheets and pillow-cases, with a pair of blankets, and light comforts on both beds, just the same as at home, and they do not soil any more or any quicker, as we have them carefully protected from dust.

I had been writing a little while after dinner, when Frank stepped up with a basket of beautiful red-cheeked apples in his hand, not a wilted one among them.

“Where shall I put them?”

“Oh, Frank, how lovely they are. Where did you get them? Thank you so much; they are not all for me?”—as he emptied the last one into the pan. “Are all the others supplied? This seems more than my share.”