Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page A

father’s well-to-do –” I began, knowing her father wasn’t at all, of course.
    “I figure to take up land and make me a place,” she said.
    “Alone?” I asked.
    Her face got a stubborn look. “I’m strong,” she said, and pushed up her sleeve and hardened her muscle for me. I reached up and touched, just a touch. A strong arm, but not a man’s.
    “Very good,” I said, but she saw my doubts and they hurt her.
    “I think on going but I never told it before. I was scared people would say I couldn’t. Do you think I can’t?”
    Let somebody else tell her. I wouldn’t.
    “No, I think you can,” I said, working hard to make my face and voice sincere.
    Her smile made my lie worthwhile. “I want to live nice, and free, and snug. I think on it.”

Chapter Two
     
    I couldn’t get Sarah Dowling off my mind, or even try very hard to. Not even a picture partway done had ever held my imagination the way she did.
    I kept wishing I had rubbed grease into her chapped hands. I wanted to even up her rough-cut nails with my little bright scissors.
    I imagined her starting west alone with her face all stubborn, walking, carrying a little pack and an ax. She’d go and go. I saw her narrow stumpy road wind up and down. She was too friendly and innocent and natural and pure. She didn’t even know that she shocked people. Men might touch her. Women might peck her with their sharp mean noses. Rain might wet her, animals might leap on her. She would have no kettle and no bed. No thread, no needle, no cow, no cart, no ox, no money. Oh, Sarah Dowling! Idiot girl, stay home, stay here! Why didn’t I tell you? You would have listened, to me.
    After two days of that I dressed myself warm and started for her. There was no wind. The morning was icy-bright. I liked it. My face wanted to freeze, and when I covered it my breath turned to ice on the wool, so there was that as a problem. But all told I liked that day. It was good to be out, walking along at a good strong pace, breathing the cold air, rescuing Sarah Dowling.
    In an hour’s fast walk I saw the Dowling place, a small plain unpainted house with a curl of smoke rising. It looked peaceful, but then two dogs came rushing out in full cry. Not mean or anything, just taking care of their place, but that was the end of peace. I may have been their first female visitor. The door opened. A tall woman crowded by girls looked out at me. Her arms were folded across her front. She nodded cautiously. The girls just stared. Bright Dowling eyes, hazel, none Sarah’s. It seemed dimly presumptuous of those girls to look so much like Sarah.
    I managed to outshout the dogs and make Mrs Dowling understand that I’d come to see Sarah. A lull in the barking let me hear “She’s in the clearing.”
    All five girls wanted to lead me to her. It wasn’t easy to convince them that I could see tracks in snow as well as anyone, but at last they pointed me right and left the rest to me.
    I found Sarah’s trail with no trouble and set my feet in her big tracks. I had to stretch to step from one to the next. Pretty soon I began to hear her ax, but I didn’t look up because I was working at my walking, and whispering, “No plow, no scissors, no basket, no rake, you can’t, you can’t.”
    The ax stopped and I looked up and there she was, surprised and smiling, leaning on her hand against a tree. The sight of her rocked me some, because nobody really looked like her after all, and I was a little tired anyway, so I leaned back against a different tree, nearby.
    “Patience White!” she said, with a face so glad I didn’t see how I could say my piece even though it was for her good. How be flat and sensible when someone’s so glad to see you?
    She left her ax hanging by its blade in the good big beech she was girdling, and went to brush the snow off a log to make me a seat. Hard snow still clung in the ridges of the bark, so she took her mittens off and laid them together there.
    “Here,” she