Whiter Than Snow Read Online Free PDF

vug is. Remember, I’m a mining student?”
    Lucy smiled. “The aspens are that bright—so bright that they bring a hurting to your eyes. And the people in Swandyke are as good as you’ll find anyplace. Why, when there’s a cave-in or somebody’s hurt on the dredge, there’s not a soul in town that won’t pitch in. Old Mrs. McCauley, who lives alone, always keeps a bed turned down in case there’s an accident and somebody needs tending. At times she has two or three at a time in her house. People who haven’t spoken to each other in years come together when there’s need.”
    “Why did you promise your father you’d go back?” Ted broke off a piece of bun and threw it into the water, and they watched as a duck swam over to it and picked it up with his bill.
    “I have to help carry the family. Papa made me promise if I went to college, I’d come back to help him out. There are half a dozen little ones at home. My sister’s the only one who works now, and she’ll likely get married soon.”
    “What if you get married, Luce?”
    “I can’t. I gave my word I’d go back, and there’s nobody on the Swan River I’d want to spend my life with.”
    “It sounds like you made the devil’s bargain.”
    Lucy laughed a little. “I suppose it will seem so after I graduate, but right now, I’m grateful I’m away for a few years.” She threw the rest of the buns into the lake, and they watched the ducks swim over to them and gobble their dinner. Then they rose and walked out of the park, Ted warming Lucy’s fingers in his own. She left him at the streetcar stop, then continued on home. When she arrived, Aunt Alice was mending a stocking in the light from the window.
    “It’s awful cold to be outside,” she observed, weaving her needle in and out over the darning egg.
    “I’m all right.”
    “You’re liable to catch your death out there.”
    Lucy shrugged and took off her coat.
    “I don’t mind if you ask your young man to come inside next time.”
    “What?”
    “I’d hate to be the cause of you getting pneumonia, you or him.”
    Lucy sat down on a footstool and stared at the woman.
    Finally, her aunt looked up. “You think I don’t notice how you leave here all primped up and come back looking like you met the king of England himself?” She chuckled. “I know your Papa don’t want you to go out with a boy, ’cause he’s scared you won’t go on back home, but I think he’s terrible mean about that.” She put down the darning egg and leaned forward in her chair. “I never had the chance. Maybe you don’t know my mother died, and my father said I had to raise up the little ones, made me take charge of the house and be the mother to my brothers and sisters. I was the oldest. Your papa was the youngest. When he was grown sufficient, I was an old maid. I never had no good time. I was used up before I could marry. None of my brothers and sisters cared the least thing about me after they were growed, and Gus is the worst, never so much as sending me a postal, except when he wants something. So I don’t care much to keep his commandments. Lord have mercy! He ain’t God. Nobody in the family but Margaret—your mother—and you has ever took a liking to me, and I’ve become right fond of you. You’ve been a blessing to me every day since you been here, so I guess you can see a boy, and I won’t tell.”
    Lucy grabbed the old woman’s hand and squeezed it, and Aunt Alice said, “Now, now.” But she seemed pleased, and after that, Ted called at the little house, and the two young people sat in the living room, sometimes by themselves, other times with the aunt. When spring came, the couple took her to Washington Park, or they all walked to the creamery for ice cream. Aunt Alice approved of the young man, and she knew long before Lucy did—or Ted, either, for that matter—that he would propose.
    And of course he did. The day he was offered a job as assistant dredgemaster on the Liberty