"Follow it far enough and it may pass the bend in the river where the
water laughs eternally over its shallows."
A corn-field in July is a sultry place. The soil is hot and dry; the
wind comes across the lazily murmuring leaves laden with a warm,
sickening smell drawn from the rapidly growing, broad-flung banners of
the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light upon
the field over which the cool shadows run, only to make the heat seem
the more intense.
Julia Peterson, faint with hunger, was tolling back and forth between
the corn-rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel corn-plough,
while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse. Her heart was
full of bitterness, her face flushed with heat, and her muscles aching
with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn came to her shoulders,
and not a breath seemed to reach her, while the sun, nearing the noon
mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders, protected only by a calico
dress. The dust rose under her feet, and as she was wet with
perspiration it soiled her till with a woman's instinctive cleanliness,
she shuddered. Her head throbbed dangerously. What matter to her that
the kingbird pitched jovially from the maples to catch a wandering
bluebottle fly, that the robin was feeding its young, that the bobolink
was singing? All these things, if she saw them, only threw her bondage
to labor into greater relief.
Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her father--a
big, gruff-voiced, wide-bearded Norwegian--at work also with a plough.
The corn must be ploughed, and so she toiled on, the tears dropping from
the shadow of the ugly sun-bonnet she wore. Her shoes, coarse and
square-toed, chafed her feet; her hands, large and strong, were browned,
or, more properly, burnt, on the backs by the sun. The horse's harness
"creak-cracked" as he swung steadily and patiently forward, the moisture
pouring from his sides, his nostrils distended.
The field bordered on a road, and on the other side of the road ran a
river--a broad, clear, shallow expanse at that point, and the eyes of
the boy gazed longingly at the pond and the cool shadow each time that
he turned at the fence.
"Say, Jule, I'm goin' in! Come, can't I? Come--say!" he pleaded, as they
stopped at the fence to let the horse breathe.
"I've let you go wade twice."
"But that don't do any good. My legs is all smarty, 'cause ol' Jack
sweats so." The boy turned around on the horse's back and slid back to
his rump. "I can't stand it!" he burst out, sliding off and darting
under the fence. "Father can't see."
The girl put her elbows on the fence and watched her little brother as
he sped away to the pool, throwing off his clothes as he ran, whooping
with uncontrollable delight. Soon she could hear him splashing about in
the water a short distance up the stream, and caught glimpses of his
little shiny body and happy face. How cool that water looked! And the
shadows there by the big basswood! How that water would cool her
blistered feet. An impulse seized her, and she squeezed between the
rails of the fence, and stood in the road looking up and down to see
that the way was clear. It was not a main-travelled road; no one was
likely to come; why not?
She hurriedly took off her shoes and stockings--how delicious the cool,
soft velvet of the grass! and sitting down on the bank under the great
basswood, whose roots formed an abrupt bank, she slid her poor
blistered, chafed feet into the water, her bare head leaned against the
huge tree-trunk.
And now, as she rested, the beauty of the scene came to her. Over her
the wind moved the leaves. A jay screamed far off, as if answering the
cries of the boy. A kingfisher crossed and recrossed the stream with
dipping sweep of his wings. The river sang with its lips to the pebbles.
The vast clouds went by majestically, far above the tree-tops, and the
snap and buzzing and ringing whir of July insects made a ceaseless,
slumberous undertone of song solvent of all else. The tired girl forgot
her work. She began to dream. This would not last always. Some one would
come to release her from such drudgery. This was her constant,
tenderest, and most secret dream. He would be a Yankee, not a Norwegian.
The Yankees didn't ask their wives to work in the field. He would have a
home. Perhaps he'd live in town--perhaps a merchant! And then she
thought of the drug clerk in Rock River who had looked at her--A voice
broke in on her dream, a fresh, manly voice.
"Well, by jinks! if it ain't Julia! Just the one I wanted to see!"
The girl turned, saw a pleasant-faced young fellow in a derby hat and a
cutaway suit of diagonals.
"Bod Rodemaker! How come--"
She remembered her situation and flushed, looked down at the water, and
remained perfectly still.
"Ain't you goin' to shake hands? Y' don't seem very glad t' see me."