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I’d be in long skirts at last. My skirt for the fair would brush my shoe tops, and there’d be no going back from that. I supposed there was wear left in the shoes we already had. But I saw Mama eye the dummy’s polished pair, white for summertime. My heart jumped over the moon.
    Now Mama turned back for Buster. He hung just inside the store, suspicious. The place was a quagmire of yardage on bolts, quilting frames, and a notions counter spiky with crochet hooks. Worse, corsets were laid outwhere you could see them. Buster shied from it all.
    Mama summoned him. Another saleslady was called for. Come to find out, Buster needed knickerbocker britches, an Eton jacket, and a wide collar to his shirt, with a flowing, artistic black sateen cravat, and a sailor hat. And long black ribbed socks to go with new high-top shoes. His feet had grown a size since he’d last had shoes on.
    Buster sagged.
    *  *  *
    Later, much later, we staggered outside, loaded like pack mules with paper parcels tied in twine. It was more Christmas than we’d ever had—in July. We were too stunned to gibber, and Buster was speechless with rage. Mama had spent all she’d gotten off Mr. Oldweiler and more she’d brought from home.
    To our everlasting shame we hadn’t given her a thought. “Mama,” I said, “you didn’t get anything for yourself.”
    “I’ve got plenty laid back I never get to wear,” she said, looking away.
    “Well, Mama,” Lottie said, “you don’t have white shoes.”
    “Yours won’t be white long,” Mama replied. “They say the Chicago streets are filthy as a hog wallow.”
    She turned us down the boardwalk. There we came upon Granddad staring in the window of the pharmacy.
    We expected to be complained of for taking up so much of his valuable time. But he was drinking in a big poster showing a fine-looking man in a western hat.
    In fancy letters the poster read:

    Granddad’s old eyes traced the colonel’s every detail: the fringe on his buckskin coat, the elegant curve of his longhorn moustaches, and the tilt of his hat. Granddad was lost in admiration.
    But when he sensed us there, he snorted. “That wasn’t in no way how we dressed when we was settlin’ this part of the country. All we had to wear was denim britches put together with rivets. And—”
    “We was happy to have them,” we all chanted under our breath.
    But Granddad could hardly tear his eyes away from the poster, though he was ready for home. We walked a good long way to where he’d tied Lillian to a shade tree. Granddad didn’t deign to remark on all our parcels. You were never sure what he noticed. But he saw the black cloud hanging over Buster.
    After he’d turned the horse in the street, he called back to him. “Boy, climb up here and ride shotgun for me and Tip.”
    So Buster tramped past us and hauled himself up between Granddad and Tip. We were in open country when we heard Granddad say, “What’s got stuck in your craw?”
    Sulky, Buster said, “They’ve tricked me out like a circus pony. They want me to wear a thing around my neck like a girl’s.”
    Granddad looked down at Buster over his specs. “Women,” he said.
    “I ain’t going to wear any of it,” Buster declared.
    Granddad considered. “Well, boy, you can’t go nekkid in Chicago. The wind comes right off the lake.”
    Then he handed Buster the reins, and Lillian Russell took us home, jaunty all the way under the blue dome of heaven.

F ASTER T HAN A G ALLOPING H ORSE

    F or a week we worked like beavers to make up for the time we’d be away. We put up peas and beans. We cooked down enough berry preserves and strained enough jelly to see us through to the Second Coming. The sticker scratches glowed on my arms.
    A pan of melting wax was always at the back of the stove, for sealing the jam jars. We’d have pickled peaches if we could have talked them into ripening in time.
    We were still at it by lamplight every night. Then Wednesday came around, and Mama