A Dream to Follow Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ingeborg, we built this farm so our sons would have this land. We have a good life here. Why would anyone want to leave it?”
    “Farming isn’t for everyone, my friend.”
    “Dinner’s ready. Would you lead us in grace, Pastor?” Ingeborg broke into the circle.
    Thorliff watched his father’s face. The tight jawline spoke of Haakan’s displeasure as he knocked his pipe against the heel of his boot to dislodge the used tobacco. Changing his far’s mind would border on the miraculous.
    Bowing his head, he joined in praying the age-old Norwegian words. “I Jesu navn, går vi til bords . . .” As he stood even with Haakan’s shoulder, the thought of leaving this place and these people struck Thorliff like an arrow. He glanced down, half expecting to see a shaft quivering in his chest. At the amen, he looked around, studying the faces of all those who meant so much to him. Tante Kaaren, who had instilled in him a love of reading and first told him that he wrote well. Far, who had come to them across the prairies the year after his real father died in the blizzard. Mor, who always said he could do anything he set his mind to. Uncle Lars, so quiet until he figured he had something important to say like “Do your best. That’s all the good Lord and I expect of you.” The twins—Grace who couldn’t hear and Sophie who loved to tease. Astrid, his baby sister, who made him feel as if he stood ten feet tall. Mrs. Solberg, who helped him rewrite, then pushed him to send his stories to magazines, as did Pastor. If it hadn’t been for Pastor Solberg, Thorliff wouldn’t have a solid knowledge of Greek and Latin, of the classics and the great philosophers, of his Bible and Bible history. Did he really want to leave them? Was going away to college necessary, or could he continue to learn and to write here at home as Haakan insisted?

CHAPTER FOUR

    Northfield, Minnesota
May 1893
    “I don’t think you want my father to know about this, do you?”
    “Probably not.” Hans raised his head. “But it’s not my fault you’re so pretty and all. I just lost my head there for a minute.”
    Elizabeth Rogers gave a decidedly unladylike snort. “Hans, you been at the still or something?” She took out a handkerchief and, turning to the side, wiped her mouth. If that’s what kisses from the male species felt like, she wanted none of it. Not that Hans’s lips had quite made it to her mouth, but . . . She rubbed her cheek too, her handkerchief coming away with the black stain of ink. “Oh, my word.”
    “Now what?”
    “Do I have ink on my face?”
    When Hans stepped closer to peer at her cheek in the dim light, she forced herself to hold still and not flinch. Her heart still thudded some after his advance. She could hardly call it an attack, and yet that’s what it felt like.
    “Yep.”
    “Bother.” She stuffed her handkerchief back in the heavy duck apron she wore to protect her clothes and turned on her heel. “See that you get that ad set in type. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    “But Eliza—er, Miss Rogers, you know you pick type faster’n I do.”
    “Too bad,” she muttered as she stormed down the hall. “You should have thought of that before . . . before . . .” She swung open the door and turned up the gaslight by the mirror. Sure enough, there was a black smear on her right cheek. “Ugh.” She dampened a cloth from the pitcher, rubbed it over the soap bar, and scrubbed at her cheek. Printer’s ink was near to indelible if not washed off right away. Her father’s hands were mute testimony to that, with ink under his nails and cuticles no matter how hard or how often he scrubbed with lye soap and a stiff-bristled brush.
    With a curl of hair dangling toward her eyes, she whipped off the kerchief she’d tied over her hair to keep it out of the way and, tucking the errant lock back in a comb, retied the kerchief. Her glance in the mirror spoke the lie she’d heard from her father’s employee’s lips.