elicities. While Clara slept of a morning, Johanna Vavrika was
bustling about, seeing that Olaf and the men had their breakfast, and
that the cleaning or the butter-making or the washing was properly begun
by the two girls in the kitchen. Then, at about eight o'clock, she would
take Clara's coffee up to her, and chat with her while she drank it,
telling her what was going on in the house. Old Mrs. Ericson frequently
said that her daughter-in-law would not know what day of the week it
was if Johanna did not tell her every morning. Mrs. Ericson despised and
pitied Johanna, but did not wholly dislike her. The one thing she hated
in her daughter-in-law above everything else was the way in which Clara
could come it over people. It enraged her that the affairs of her son's
big, barnlike house went on as well as they did, and she used to feel
that in this world we have to wait overlong to see the guilty punished.
"Suppose Johanna Vavrika died or got sick?" the old lady used to say to
Olaf. "Your wife wouldn't know where to look for her own dish-cloth."
Olaf only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did not
die, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was looking poorly,
she was never ill. She seldom left the house, and she slept in a little
room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, could come prying
about there to find fault without her knowing it. Her one weakness was
that she was an incurable talker, and she sometimes made trouble without
meaning to.

This morning Clara was tying a wine-coloured ribbon about her throat
when Johanna appeared with her coffee. After putting the tray on a
sewing table, she began to make Clara's bed, chattering the while in
Bohemian.

"Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I'm going down
presently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He asked for prune
preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out of them, and to bring
some prunes and honey and cloves from town."

Clara poured her coffee. "Ugh! I don't see how men can eat so much sweet
stuff. In the morning, too!"

Her aunt chuckled knowingly. "Bait a bear with honey, as we say in the
old country."

"Was he cross?" her niece asked indifferently.

"Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if you know how
to take him. I never knew a man to make so little fuss about bills. I
gave him a list of things to get a yard long, and he didn't say a word;
just folded it up and put it in