Caddie Woodlawn's Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

me how.”
    She fumbled through the untidy bundle of quilts and skillets in the wheelbarrow and brought out a little willow basket.
    “Why, it’s ever so pretty!” cried Caddie, sincerely pleased. “But you’d ought to keep it for yourself.”
    “Oh, I can make lots more of them,” said Emma. “Big ones, too; but we don’t have room to carry them, and I thought you’d like this little one.”
    “I’d love it,” said Caddie. “Thank you, Emma.”
    Meals were always good at the Woodlawns’, but any sort of company rallied Mrs. Woodlawn to extra effort. Tonight, besides the supper which she had already planned, she went to the smokehouse and took down one of the hams which had come from their own well-fed pigs and had been salted and smoked under her own direction. With a sharp knife she cut the tender pink slices and fried them delicately brown before heaping them on the big blue china platter. Each slice was half ringed around with a delicate layer of fat—just enough to give variety to the lean. Mr. Woodlawn filled the plates of the hungry-looking McCantrys with the generosity of a good host, and Emma and the littler boy fell to with a will. But Pearly set up a thin wail of protest.
    “I can’t eat this,” she said, pointing an accusing finger at the fat.
    “Me neither,” said Ezra, the littlest brother.
    “You can’t eat that tender bit of fat?” cried Mrs. Woodlawn in surprise.
    “They’ve got aristocratic stomachs,” Mrs. McCantry said proudly.
    For a moment Mrs. Woodlawn was speechless.
    “Maybe Mama could cut the fat part off for you, Pearly,” began Mrs. McCantry doubtfully.
    Mrs. Woodlawn’s earrings began to tremble as they always did when she was excited.
    “No,” she said, with that gleam in her eye which her own children had learned to obey. “If you can’t eat that good ham just as it is, fat and lean, you’re not very hungry. My children eat what is set before them with a relish. They know if they don’t they can go to bed empty. Anyone who eats at my table can do the same.”
    Over her tumbler of milk Caddie saw with twinkling eyes that Pearly and Ezra were eating their fat with their lean. Personally she thought the fat was the best part when it was all crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside, as Mother fried it.
    The McCantrys were not there for one night only; they stayed on for many days, but there were no more complaints about their meals.
    Caddie and Emma enjoyed the time very much. Together they went down to the swamp where the young willows grew thickly, and the boys helped them cut slender, pliant shoots to weave more baskets. The Woodlawn land and Dr. Nightingale’s land came together here at the edge of the swamp, and beyond their fences the swamp stretched away in a fairyland of tiny hummocks and islands on which grew miniature firs and tamaracks. There were wild rice in the swamp in the autumn and quantities of wild cranberries.
    “What a pretty place this is!” said Emma. “If I were you, Caddie, I would build a little house on this hill overlooking the swamp. I like the nice spicy swamp smell, don’t you?”
    A red-winged blackbird, swaying on a reed, uttered a throaty call, and Emma answered it.
    Caddie remembered this later, when she heard her father and mother talking about a home for the McCantrys.
    “Really, Harriet,” said Mr. Woodlawn, “I’ve talked alone with McCantry, and they have reached rock bottom. He hasn’t any money left.”
    “To hear
her
talk, you would think they were millionaires.”
    “I know, my dear, but she’s a foolish woman. It’s her foolishness that’s “brought them where they are, I think. But we can’t let them starve for all that, and we can’t have them living with us always either. Somehow we’ve got to set them on their feet once more.”
    “Well, Johnny, grumble as I may, I suppose that you are always right about such things. What had we better do?” sighed Mrs. Woodlawn.
    “I thought we might give