The Unlikely Allies Read Online Free PDF Page A

is—the woman who refuses to marry your son. I think you ought to take a stick to her.”
    “It’s you who needs the stick!” Rolf’s father was a tall, broad-shouldered man with iron-gray hair and a weathered complexion. He put out his hand. “I’m Norman, and this is my wife, Hulda.”
    “Come in by the fire,” Hulda said. “I would guess that son of mine hasn’t fed you.”
    “I’m so glad to meet you,” Mallory said. “And, no, he hasn’t fed me today.”
    “Well, come in,” Norman said. “Dinner has been ready since early this morning. Momma has been cooking a feast.”
    Mallory entered the house, where a cheerful fire crackled in a hearth that warmed an open area including a sitting room, dining area, and kitchen. The fragrance of fresh bread baking filled the room. She looked around, noting the low ceilings with exposed beams and the wooden walls weathered to a silvery gray. The walls were liberally covered with drawings and paintings. The sturdy wooden furniture, polished smooth with age, was simple but appeared comfortable.
    “You come this way,” Hulda said to Mallory, “and I will show you where you will be staying.”
    “I feel like this is such an imposition.”
    “Nonsense. It’ll be good to have company. I’m afraid you’ll find life here very boring. There’s really nothing to do.”
    Hulda led Mallory down a short hallway and showed her through a door into a pleasant bedroom with white furniture. White curtains at the window with a blue-flower border matched a handmade blue-and-white quilt on the bed, and a dark blue rag rug warmed up the hardwood floor. “Why, this is a beautiful room!” Mallory exclaimed.
    “It was our daughter’s, but she’s married now. Make yourself at home while I go put supper on the table.”
    Rolf entered the bedroom as his mother left, carrying Mallory’s suitcases. “I’d better help you unpack.”
    “No thanks. I can take care of that myself.”
    He set one suitcase on a chair and the other on the floor.
    “Your parents are very nice.”
    “I’m glad you’ll be staying here with them. They get lonely. I don’t get up here much except during vacations.” He opened the closet door. “Hurry up and unpack. I’m starved.”
    “You’re always starved. If you’d be so kind as to wait in the sitting room, I’ll be done before you know it.”
    Twenty minutes later the four of them sat down to a meal that would have fed an army.
    “This is delicious soup,” Mallory said. “What is it?”
    “Hulda’s secret formula,” Norman said with a grin. “She’s only going to give it to Rolf’s bride. She guards her recipes jealously.”
    “You might as well give it to her now, then,” Rolf said. He had stuffed his mouth full of a buttery roll and spoke around it in a muffled tone. “She’s going to marry me sooner or later—when she stops being so stubborn about it.”
    “I’m not stubborn!” Mallory objected. “I’m just too old for you.”
    “You’ll have to be careful of him,” Hulda said. “He’s been chasing older women since he was fifteen years old.”
    “And caught a few of them, I daresay.”
    Mallory flashed a smile at Norman.
    The fire crackled and popped in the fireplace, and the pleasant smell of burning wood mingled with the odor of the fresh bread.
    “I understand you’re going to be working with the Lapps,” Norman commented. He sipped dark tea from a huge cup. “They’re a strange people. Do you speak Lapp?”
    “No, I don’t. But Rolf tells me that most of the young people learn Norwegian in school.”
    “That they do these days. Back when I was a boy before the schools were here, you couldn’t communicate with them. Things are different now.”
    “However are you going to get to them?” Hulda asked. “They wander all over the north country, all the way to Sweden and Finland . . . even the Soviet Union.”
    “God will provide a way,” Mallory said, smiling.
    “I understand your whole family are