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Updated: July 5, 2025
"Why, Dallas, you don't meant to say that you that she still " "Yes," very low. "Well," Lounsbury was determined now, "there's got to be some kind of an understanding. I told you how I felt, and you ran away from me. You shan't do it this time. I'll go to the house, and I'll tell Marylyn just how things are. I will." "Oh, my baby sister!" she murmured. Instantly, he was all gentleness.
But even with the house darkened, the early supper eaten and Marylyn asleep in her bed before the hearth, the elder girl still kept on the alert. A nervousness born of loneliness had taken possession of her. If the doorlatch rattled, she raised herself, listening.
Marylyn raised to her father a quick, warning finger. "It's in the Bible, pa," she whispered. "Heh?" "It's in the Bible." "Don' y' think Ah know?" Evan poked the fire cheerfully. He was fairly started in a conversation. "Thet Shadrach was a prophet, ef Ah recall it jes' right," he said tentatively. The evangelist shot him a sorrowful glance. "No, pa," whispered Marylyn again.
"This is Marylyn," she said, as the storekeeper leaned to grasp her father's hand. Lounsbury again lifted his hat and looked down, long and admiringly, upon the younger girl.
"You git you' clothes on," he ordered roughly, "an' rustle us some breakfas'." She retreated, ready for tears. Dallas walked up to him, gave him his crutches, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Dad," she said firmly, "don't take out your mad on Marylyn. Keep it all for him." She nodded south toward Brannon. "That's where it belongs." "Dallas, you plumb disgus' me," he retorted.
For the drifts that had been piling up gradually to the north and west of the shack, sealing the windows and the door, had risen to the grassy eaves and overflowed them, and so weighted the thatch. Next morning, long before Marylyn and her father wakened, Dallas roused. The room was in dusk, and its air was so cold that it seemed fairly to singe the skin. She could not read.
Marylyn saw that she was dispirited, and increased in tenderness toward her, following her about with eyes that entreated, yet were not sad. At breakfast she spitted the choicest cuts for Dallas. In the noon heat, she was at her elbow with a dipper of ginger-beer. And supper coaxed the elder girl's failing appetite by offerings of tasty stew, white flour dumplings and pone.
Marylyn let drop her bonnet and the cow-horn that hung by a thong to her wrist. Then, with folded hands, she looked up and around her, sniffing the warm air in delight. The Texas home had never offered such a lovely retreat.
At dinner, with Marylyn sitting across from her, she began to see more clearly. She realised she had been dreaming; that for her there was only self-denial. She ate nothing, but drank her dipper thirstily, as if to wash away a parch in her throat. Back in the swale again, the scythe was swung less steadily, but with more strength, so that its sharp tip often hacked up the ground.
As for herself, Marylyn needed neither urging nor tidbits. She ate heartily. Her sleep was a rest for both body and mind. Every afternoon she strolled across the bend to the cottonwoods. The butterflies fared beside her. Overhead, between sun and earth, hung legions of grasshoppers, like a haze. Underfoot, bluebell and sunflower nodded. And the grove was a place for dreams!
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