The Whistling Season Read Online Free PDF Page B

will go, in Great Falls this evening. The convocation of delegates from the rural school systems will include old friends, people I have known since I had my own country classroom. "Mr. Milliron, good to see you," they will say, or "Superintendent, hello again." Not a woman nor a man of them is comfortable calling me "Paul." They likely are not going to want to anyway, after today.
    There is time before that yet. For the meeting of another sort where, like Toby, I can at least boast perfect attendance. Back there at memory's depot where Rose stepped down from the train, bringing several kinds of education to the waiting four of us.

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    S HE ALIT TO THE PLANKED PLATFORM OF THE WESTWATER depot on feet as dainty as Toby's little ones.
    In those days people poured off the afternoon train—it was called that even though it was the only one all day—and peered around like sailors in uncharted latitudes as they waited for their belongings from the baggage car. Babies lulled by the rocking motion of the train were coming awake with shrieks at their new surroundings. Coal dust from the engine tender and the smell of mothballed things gotten out for long journeys clung in the air. Our eyes big with the occasion, Damon and Toby and I couldn't help but stare at the black-clad Belgian boys in the latest colony of families transplanting themselves from Flanders, nor they at us.
    Father, who in strongest terms had prescribed best behavior for us at the depot, was standing on tiptoe and teetering a bit as he tried to sort anyone housekeeperly from the swelling crowd of land pilgrims and Big Ditch workmen and homestead people like us on town errands that called for Sunday clothes.
    The disembarking passengers were dwindling rapidly,
though, and Father's composed expression along with them, when we heard "Coming through!" and had to move back to dodge the cart of cream cans that were the freight for the train's return run to the mainline. Ever since, I think of Rose as having materialized to us like a genie from a galvanized urn.
    For when the creamery cart had passed, there she was on the top step of the nearest Pullman car, assembled in surprising finery, targeting us with an inventive smile which somehow seemed to favor all four of us equally, while at the same time allowing herself to be helped down by an evident admirer from the train.
    "Mrs. Llewellyn?" Father addressed her as if wondering out loud.
    "Yes, absolutely!"
    Before we were done blinking she was across the platform to us, a smartly gloved hand extended. "Oh, I'm exceedingly happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Milliron. And these are your young men!"
    Naturally the three of us puffed up at that promotion in rank. Names were given, handshakes exchanged right down the line—Rose's hand, like the rest of her, was slender but firm—and our notion of the league of widowhood seriously readjusted. Aunt Eunice always excepted, in our experience widows were massive. We felt ourselves shrink in the presence of those great-bosomed old creatures shrouded in dresses as solemnly gray as the gravestones whereunder their late husbands lay. But this mourner of Mr. Llewellyn, whoever he may have been, was all but swathed in a traveling dress the shade of blue flame—Minneapolis evidently did not lack for satin—and there did not seem to be an ounce extra anywhere on her pert frame. In fact, I had noticed Father give a double look as if there must be more of her somewhere.
    And she was awfully far from being old.
    "Mr. Milliron, let me say at once," the words rushed from her as if she had been holding them in all the way from the train station in Minnesota, "your kind understanding in letting me draw ahead on my wages made a world of difference to my situation. Really it did. I don't know what I would have done but for your letters of—" Here adequate tribute to the Milliron corresponding hand—mine—obviously failed her, and she accorded Father a look of