Clara smiled and leaned back in her chair, beginning softly: I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls,
With vassals and serfs at my knee,'
and Joe hummed like a big bumblebee.
'There's one more you always played,' Clara said quietly, 'I remember that best.' She locked her hands over her knee and began 'The Heart Bowed Down,' and sang it through without groping for the words. She was singing with a good deal of warmth when she came to the end of the old song:
'For memory is the only friend
That grief can call its own.'
Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shaking his head. 'No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Too sad, too sad! I not like-a dat. Play quick somet'ing gay now.'
Nils put his lips to the instrument, and Joe lay back in his chair, laughing and singing,
'Oh, Evelina, Sweet Evelina!' Clara laughed, too. Long ago, when she and Nils went to high school, the model student of their class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles.
Her name was Evelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging walk which somehow suggested the measure of that song, and they used mercilessly to sing it at her.
'Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school,' Joe gasped, 'an' she still walks chust like dat, yup-a, yup-a, yup-a, chust like a camel she go! Now, Nils, we have some more li'l drink. Oh, yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-
Nils screwed up his eyes. 'That I don't know. When she says.'
Joe threw out his chest. 'Das-a way boys talks. No way for mans. Mans say, 'You come to de church, an' get a hurry on you.' Das-a way mans talks.'
'Maybe Nils hasn't got enough to keep a wife,' put in Clara ironically. 'How about that, Nils?' she asked him frankly, as if she wanted to know.
Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. 'oh, I can keep her, all right.'
'The way she wants to be kept?'
'With my wife, I'll decide that,' replied Nils calmly. 'I'll give her what's good for her.'
Clara made a wry face. 'You'll give her the strap, I expect, like old Peter Oleson gave his wife.'
'When she needs it,' said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his head and squinting up through the leaves of the cherry tree. 'Do you remember the time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress, and Aunt Johanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren't you mad! You had both hands full of cherries, and I squeezed 'em and made the juice fly all over you. I liked to have fun with you; you'd get so mad.'
'We
Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at her. 'I've played with lots of girls since, but I haven't found one who was such good fun.'
Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face, and deep in the back of her eyes there shone something fiery, like the yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. 'Can you still play, or are you only pretending?'
'I can play better than I used to, and harder.'
'Don't you ever work, then?' She had not intended to say it. It slipped out because she was confused enough to say just the wrong thing.
'I work between times.' Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her. 'Don't you worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You're getting like all the rest of them.' He reached his brown, warm hand across the table and dropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. 'Last call for play, Mrs. Ericson!' Clara shivered, and suddenly her hands and cheeks grew warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they looked at each other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the bottle to his lips and was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai, standing. The sun, just about to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on his flushed face and curly yellow hair. 'Look,' Clara whispered, 'that's the way I want to grow old.'
VI
On the day of Olaf Ericson's barn-raising, his wife, for once in a way, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been baking cakes and frying and boiling and spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it was not until the day before the party was to take place that Clara showed any interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her fitful spasms of energy, and took the wagon and little Eric and spent the day on Plum Creek, gathering vines and swamp goldenrod to decorate the barn.
By four o'clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to arrive at the big unpainted building in front of Olaf's house. When Nils and his mother came at five, there were more than fifty people in the barn, and a great drove of children. On the ground floor stood six long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing Ericson families, lent for the occasion. In the middle of each table was a big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled with woodbine. In one corner of the barn, behind a pile of green- and-white striped watermelons, was a circle of chairs for the old people; the younger guests sat on bushel measures or barbed-wire spools, and the children tumbled about in the haymow. The box stalls Clara had converted into booths. The framework was hidden by goldenrod and sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered 'With wild grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watched over her cooked meats, enough to provision an army; and at the next her kitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream freezers, and Clara was already cutting pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At the third stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress, dispensed lemonade throughout the afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had thought it inadvisable to serve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrika had come over with two demijohns concealed in his buggy, and after his arrival the wagon shed was much frequented by the men.
'Hasn't Cousin Clara fixed things lovely?' little Hilda whispered, when Nils went up to her stall and asked for lemonade.
Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little girl and watching the people.
