Heart of the Sandhills Read Online Free PDF

smile and a nod, Gen emerged from beneath the quilt. Inspecting the tip of her left middle finger she muttered, “I don’t have a callus yet. My finger is nearly bleeding.”
    “I’d say that’s a signal it’s time to bake cookies!” Marjorie said.
    “Can we?” Gen asked, surprised.
    Marjorie nodded. “I’ve been saving back the makings for a special occasion. I’d say this is it.” She stood up and stretched, arching her back and rubbing her neck. While Gen and Nancy released the C-clamps holding the quilting frame in place and sent it back up to the kitchen ceiling, Marjorie bustled to the pantry. “I like to went crazy all these weeks cooped up in this house alone. I was crying to the Lord about it just this morning. In fact, I told Jeb I was going to make my own snowshoes and head out after lunch if he didn’t figure a way to get the team out and get me some female company.” She plopped a flour sack on the table. Her eyes teared up as she looked from Gen to Nancy. “I’m being silly, I know. But I just got to tell you two you mean a lot to me.” She blushed furiously and headed back to the pantry.

    “Finally!” Marjorie opened her front door wide and waved Gen and Nancy inside. “I thought you’d never get here.”
    She and Gen followed Marjorie through the drafty house toward the warmth of the kitchen. At the doorway they both stopped short. Three other women sat around the quilt. At the sight of Gen and Nancy, they all cast piercing glances in Marjorie’s direction.
    Putting a reassuring hand on each of her friend’s shoulders, Marjorie spoke up. “I know we’ve all been lonely with the string of bad weather, and when I sent Jeb out to round you ladies up for a day of quilting, I thought it’d be a good time for you to meet Genevieve Two Stars and Nancy Lawrence. They learned to quilt from the same missionaries that won ‘em to the Lord,” she said. ‘While she made introductions, she pulled out the chair next to a blonde-haired woman. “Nancy, you sit here next to Lydia.”
    When Nancy didn’t move, she felt Marjorie’s hand on her back, gently guiding her to the designated chair.
    Lydia pulled her hands away from the quilt top and shifted her chair away an inch or two, but she was blocked by her neighbor, a stoop-shouldered woman Marjorie had introduced as Lydia’s sister Violet.
    “Harriet,” Marjorie said to a stout, dour-faced woman on the opposite side of the quilt, “now that we’re all here, I’ll just pop those rolls you brought in the oven.” She directed Gen to the opposite side of the quilt. “You sit next to Harriet. I’ll pull up another chair in minute.” And so, while Marjorie slid a pan of rolls into the oven and clattered around making coffee, five very uncomfortable women sat motionless around a half-finished quilt while Marjorie filled the air with chatter.
    “Show them, Gen,” Marjorie said as she put a pot of coffee on to boil. “Show them the quilt we made for Meg.”
    Gen had wondered why Marjorie had sent word for her to bring what they had come to call the Two Stars Quilt with her, but she had obeyed, folding it into a basket slung over her arm. Now, as she exited the kitchen and went to retrieve the basket from where she had set it inside the front door, she heard Marjorie say, “Meg is the missionary’s daughter I told you girls about. One of the children Gen’s husband protected during the—the unpleasantness.”
    When Gen returned to the kitchen and held Meg’s quilt up, the woman named Lydia let out an admiring “Oh.”
    Marjorie spoke up. “Isn’t it stunning? I’ve never seen anything like that. Her husband teased her about putting two stars inside the moon. Don’t you just love what Genevieve did?”
    “How did you ever think to combine gold with the dark blue?” Lydia asked.
    Gen touched a piece of gold fabric while she said, “The scraps are from Daniel’s work shirts. The gold was in a package a friend sent from New York