our brothers and sisters are hard to
keep. Where's a body to begin, with these people? They're wanting in
everything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give 'em that,
I guess. Jimmy, here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they
are. Do you reckon that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?'

'He's a worker, all right, ma'm, and he's got some ketch-on about him;
but he's a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world;
and then, ag'in, they can be too mean.'

That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package
Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that
looked like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers,
and the most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthy
odour. We could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.

'They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain't dried
fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, I
shouldn't want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with old
clothes and goose pillows.'

She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of
the chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot
the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those
little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and
treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered,
probably, in some deep Bohemian forest....

XI

DURING THE WEEK before Christmas, Jake was the most important person
of our household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmas
shopping. But on the twenty-first of December, the snow began to fall.
The flakes came down so thickly that from the sitting-room windows
I could not see beyond the windmill--its frame looked dim and grey,
unsubstantial like a shadow. The snow did not stop falling all day, or
during the night that followed. The cold was not severe, but the storm
was quiet and resistless. The men could not go farther than the barns
and corral. They sat about the house most of the day as if it were
Sunday; greasing their boots, mending their suspenders, plaiting
whiplashes.

On the morning of the twenty-second, grandfather announced at breakfast
that it would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases.
Jake was sure he could get through on horseback, and bring home our
things in saddle-bags; but grandfather told hi