Roberta: Bride of Wisconsin (American Mail-Order Bride 30) Read Online Free PDF Page A

were finished eating, Jakob paid for their meal, and they went back out to the buggy. The boys were dropped off at their school, and Bobbie stayed silent as they rode the rest of the way to his house.
    Jakob couldn't miss her silence as they drove toward the house, but he wasn't sure if he should be angry with her or not. It was a good thing she was showing an interest in his children already, but he didn't want her thinking she could come in and change the boy's plans for his life. He and Erna had encouraged him to do what he wanted when he was twelve, and he would continue to do so, if only to keep his memories of his first wife alive.
    Bobbie gasped when they pulled up in front of the house. She'd grown up in a much bigger house, yes, but this was the biggest house she'd seen in Wisconsin so far. Did that mean her new husband was wealthy?
    Back East when a man was wealthy, he showed it in the way he acted, but maybe it was different here in Wisconsin. It was certainly a different place for her to be.
    He helped her down from the buggy, getting her two carpet bags from the back. "Come on then." He opened the door, and immediately flushed with shame as he saw the house Erna had kept so immaculate through a stranger's eyes. He said nothing, but led her to the room beside his she would be sleeping in. "This room will be yours. Mine is that one," he indicated another room with his thumb, and then he pointed to the stairs. "The boys each have a bedroom upstairs, and there's a family parlor up there as well as a spare bedroom for guests. We have a bathroom right through that doorway, and the kitchen is through here." He mentally cringed as they walked into the kitchen. There were several days' worth of dishes in the sink as well as piled on the work table.
    "I'll be off to work now. The boys will be home around half past four, and I'm usually home by five-thirty. I might be a little late, because I missed the morning of work. It depends on whether or not anything went wrong." He left without another word, closing the door behind him.
    Bobbie looked at the mess in the kitchen, and then slowly walked through the entire house, taking inventory of how dirty it really was. Every inch of the place needed a scrubbing. Why it looked as if no one had made an attempt to clean in almost a year, and they probably hadn't.
    She wanted to sit down at the table and cry, but what was the point? She'd still have the same amount of work to do.
    Instead, she removed her heavy coat, and took it into her bedroom and hung it in the wardrobe. Then she rolled up her sleeves and got to work, starting in the kitchen seemed her best bet. Food needed to come from there, and she didn't want her new family to die from the filth.
     
    *****
     
    By the time the boys had come home from school, she had finished cleaning the kitchen to her own exacting standards. Every dish had been washed, the table and floor had both been scrubbed, and the stove had been properly blackened. She had a huge pot of stew simmering on the stove, and she was up on a chair scrubbing the tops of the walls that she hadn't been able to reach from the floor.
    "What are you doing up there, Frog- mutter ?" Lukas asked.
    She wanted to scream at him to stop calling her by that ridiculous name, but she smiled down at him instead. "I'm washing the tops of the walls that I can't reach from the floor."
    "No one can see up there," he protested. "Why waste your time?"
    "It's not wasted, because then I'll know it's clean." Bobbie had never been what she would consider an ambitious cleaner, but filth was something else entirely. She would feel dirty until every room in that house had been cleaned by her own hands.
    Konrad walked into the kitchen, ignoring the fact that she was on a chair. "What's for supper?"
    At least the older one had yet to call her 'frog- mutter .' "Stew. If I can get the walls washed in time, I'll make some biscuits to go with it."
    "Biscuits?" That got both boys' attention, but