Ma Pettengill

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects,
Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Author of Bunker Bean , Ruggles of Red Gap , Somewhere in Red Gap , etc.
1919
From the Arrowhead corrals I strolled up the poplar-bordered lane that leads past the bunk house to the castle of the ranch's chatelaine. It was a still Sunday afternoon—the placid interlude, on a day of rest, between the chores of the morning and those of evening. But the calm was for the ear alone. To the eye certain activities, silent but swift, were under way. On the shaded side piazza of the ranch house I could discern my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill; she sat erect, even in a rocking-chair, and knitted. On the kitchen steps, full in the westering sun, sat the Chinese chef of the Arrowhead, and knitted—a yellow, smoothly running automaton. On a shaded bench by the spring house, a plaid golfing cap pushed back from one-half the amazing area of his bare pate, sat the aged chore-boy, Boogles, and knitted. The ranch was on a war basis.
And more: As I came abreast of the bunk house the Sabbath calm was punctured by the tart and careless speech of Sandy Sawtelle, a top rider of the Arrowhead, for he, too, was knitting, or had been. On a stool outside the doorway he held up an unfinished thing before his grieved eyes and devoutly wished it in the place of punishment of the wicked dead. The sincere passion of his tones not only arrested my steps but lured through the open doorway the languorous and yawning Buck Devine, who hung over the worker with disrespectful attention. I joined the pair. To Buck's query, voiced in a key of feigned mirth, Sandy said with simple dignity that it was going to be a darned good sweater for the boys in the trenches. Mr. Devine offered to bet his head that it wasn't going to be anything at all—at least nothing any one would want round a trench. Mr. Sawtelle ignored the wager and asked me if I knew how to do this here, now, casting off. I did not.