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Waldstricker was coming at two o'clock! Rounding the lake point, on which stood the hut of her squatter friends, she spied "Satisfied" seated on the bench near the doorway. Tess waved her hand, and the old fisherman signaled in return. "Ma thought ye'd be comin' soon, brat," was Longman's greeting. "I air brung her some salt-risin' bread," Tess announced, sitting down beside the fisherman.
I'm hungry enough to eat anything except salt-risin' bread and Roquefort cheese." "No," said the other; "I don't want to cause any more trouble than necessary." "Well, there's a lot of grub in the cache. Let's load up the sled." "I'm hardly a thief." "Oh, but " "No!" "Fingerless" Fraser fell back into sour silence.
"Seems as though I hadn't any ambition left," she often complained to her daughter. "There's nothin' here to do with, and nobody to do for. The most of the folks we ever see wouldn't know sour-dough bread from salt-risin', and as for dressin' up, I might keep the same clothes on from Fourth July till Christmas your father'd never know." But Ruth Mary was haunted by no fleshpots of the past.
He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the sumac-bushes heralded an approach. "That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread. She lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her you-uns war lackin'."
'I happened to have some cold ham and cold mutton on hand not much of either one and I sliced 'em and put the ham in one end o' the big meat-dish and the mutton in the other, with a big bare place between, so's everybody could see that there wasn't enough of either one to go 'round; and then, says she, 'I sliced up a loaf o' my salt-risin' bread and got out a bowl o' honey and a dish o' damson preserves, and then I went out on the porch and told Sam that dinner was ready.
"Abram took some of 'em on his fine stock, and I took some of 'em on my quilts and salt-risin' bread and cakes," she said, impressively. To the artist his medals, to the soldier his cross of the Legion of Honor, and to Aunt Jane her silver cups. All the triumph of a humble life was symbolized in these shining things. They were simple and genuine as the days in which they were made.
But Bessie had the standards of an open-handed people to whom economy was not a virtue. There had always been on her mother's table for every meal "salt-risin' light bread" and corn pone or griddle-cakes, half a dozen kinds of preserves, the staples in proportion.
"But, as I was sayin', I always enjoyed cookin', and it's a pleasure to me to set and think about the hams I've b'iled and the salt-risin' bread I've baked and the old-fashioned pound-cake and sponge-cake and all the rest o' the things I used to take to the fair.
Abram was always mighty proud o' my cookin', and we generally had a half a dozen or more o' the town folks to eat dinner with us every day o' the fair. Old Judge Grace and Dr. Brigham never failed to eat with us. The old judge'd say something about my salt-risin' bread every time I'd meet him in town.
When I put on mournin' it was as good as new, and I give it to sister Mary. That one with the green ground and white figger was my niece Rebecca's. She wore it for the first time to the County Fair the year I took the premium on my salt-risin' bread and sponge cake. This black-an'-white piece Sally Ann Flint give me.
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