dusky shade up among the
rafters. There were fat, rosy old women who looked hot in their best
black dresses; spare, alert old women with brown, dark-veined hands;
and several of almost heroic frame, not less massive than old Mrs.
Ericson herself. Few of them wore glasses, and old Mrs. Svendsen, a
Danish woman, who was quite bald, wore the only cap among them. Mrs.
Oleson, who had twelve big grandchildren, could still show two
braids of yellow hair as thick as her own wrists. Among all these
grandmothers there were more brown heads than white. They all had a
pleased, prosperous air, as if they were more than satisfied with
themselves and with life. Nils, leaning against Hilda's
lemonade-stand, watched them as they sat chattering in four
languages, their fingers never lagging behind their tongues.

"Look at them over there," he whispered, detaining Clara as she
passed him. "Aren't they the Old Guard? I've just counted thirty
hands. I guess they've wrung many a chicken's neck and warmed many a
boy's jacket for him in their time."

In reality he fell into amazement when he thought of the Herculean
labors those fifteen pairs of hands had performed: of the cows they
had milked, the butter they had made, the gardens they had planted,
the children and grandchildren they had tended, the brooms they had
worn out, the mountains of food they had cooked. It made him dizzy.
Clara Vavrika smiled a hard, enigmatical smile at him and walked
rapidly away. Nils' eyes followed her white figure as she went
toward the house. He watched her walking alone in the sunlight,
looked at her slender, defiant shoulders and her little hard-set
head with its coils of blue-black hair. "No," he reflected; "she'd
never be like them, not if she lived here a hundred years. She'd
only grow more bitter. You can't tame a wild thing; you can only
chain it. People aren't all alike. I mustn't lose my nerve." He gave
Hilda's pigtail a parting tweak and set out after Clara. "Where to?"
he asked, as he came upon her in the kitchen.

"I'm going to the cellar for preserves."

"Let me go with you. I never get a moment alone with you. Why do you
keep out of my way?"

Clara laughed. "I don't usually get in anybody's way."

Nils followed her down the stairs and to the far corner of the
cellar, where a basement window let in a stream of light. From a
swinging shelf Clara selected several glass jars, each labeled in
Johanna's careful hand. Nils took up a brown flas