Some Luck Read Online Free PDF

of any kind, Kurt, John, and Gus were making big silent “no”s with their mouths. And then, when Ma spoke, they all laughed and she wondered why.
    Eloise’s own view was that there was no reason to ask. Years of watching Rosanna, who couldn’t help chattering on about all her plans, so that Ma had to have some opinion or other, and Rolf, who just did what Papa told him had to be done, showed Eloise that if you simply went about your business, no one interfered with you, especially in a house where there were six children, sometimes an aunt or a cousin living in, a hired man or two from the old country, and Oma and Opa in and out. You did your assigned tasks in a somewhat ostentatious manner and asked questions until they got fed up with you, then you went behind the corn crib and read your book or drew your picture. And then you put what you were doing under your mattress, and no one ever asked you about it. It was the same at school. If you raised your hand enough times in the front row, they sat you in the back, almost behind the woodstove, and you could finish your work (which was always easy) and go on reading the book you had brought in your schoolbag, entitled Miss Lulu Bett (a book that her friend Maggie had bought in a store down in Usherton). She and her friends had all sorts of publications that the adults knew nothing about, including another book called Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle and a very fat one called Little Dorrit , though none of the girls had been able to get through that one yet. They had copies of Adventure magazine; The Delineator , which had nice dress patterns that Eloise liked to look at; and four issues of McCall’s . Each of the girls kept a diary—Maggie had gotten them notebooks, and they had sewn covers out of canvas. Eloise’s was tan, with blue embroidery. What, she thought, was so special about a child who could say ten words in a row, just because they had been said to him over and over (as in “One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, ready or not, here I come!”)? But now her own mother, the great naysayer, was kissing him all over, and everyone was laughing, and Opa said, “ Ja , maybe he’s smart enough not to buy himself a farm, what you think?”
    Everyone laughed as if this were a joke. Eloise thought, “I’m smart enough for that.” She glanced at Rolf, who was eating his goose asif he hadn’t a thought in the world. Eloise thought, “But Rolf isn’t.” She picked up the spoon for the mashed potatoes, and served herself another small helping.
    “ HE ISN ’ T yet two,” said Mama, holding him a little more tightly.
    “Ah, he’ll like it,” said Papa. “Never saw a nicer horse than Jake. You’ve been on him. I’ve been on him. Here, Eloise, climb on the feed trough there, and show Rosanna.”
    It was dim in the big barn, but arrows and sparkles of light pierced the dark walls here and there. Frank knew what the beings were in their separate enclosures—“cows” going in and out over there, white “sheep” with black faces (one two three four five six), a “rooster” perched on a beam above them, and this greatest of beings, Jake the “horse,” pale gray, almost white, who now turned his nose and eyes toward Frank and made noise. Frank laughed.
    Eloise said, “I have a dress on.”
    “You’re wearing your long johns, aren’t you? He’s clean. I brushed him before you came out.”
    They all walked with Jake across some of the dark earth to a place, and then Eloise climbed, and then Papa helped her, and soon she was sitting on the back of Jake, holding his hair, and then Papa put his hands around Frank and lifted him high in the air, and he kicked his legs, and then he was set upon Jake’s back, just in front of Eloise, and Eloise put her arm tight around him.
    “Oh, goodness,” said Mama. “Well, that is cute, in spite of everything.”
    “I was riding my father’s Percherons out to the pasture when I was three,” said Walter.