XIV
RUTH AND THE STRAW STACK
The Monday morning's mail brought them notice that the cement drain tile had arrived in town. They found it cheaper to buy this from a firm that made a specialty of tile rather than try to make them, and, more important still, a letter had been received by Tony saying his wife would arrive on the ten o'clock train; so it was decided that work should be suspended on the hen house for the morning and that Tony and Bob should take the car and drive in to meet the train, while Joe Williams would take the team and bring out the tile and some new seed corn that he was getting for the spring planting—a new variety that John White had persuaded him to try.
At eight-thirty work on the hen house was suspended, the car gotten out and cleaned, Bob changed his clothes, and Tony, with as much of the dirt removed as possible—smiling and happy—got into the car and drove to the station. They arrived just a few minutes before the train, Bob remaining in the car while Tony went around the station to meet his wife, as she alighted from the train.
[Illustration: EVERY BOY THAT RAN AWAY FROM THE FARM AND MANY THAT ARE
STILL THERE CAN TELL OF THE DAYS WASTED ON REPAIRS TO WOODEN FENCES
AND CLEANING OUT FENCE ROWS. YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND A PROSPEROUS FARMER
BEHIND A NEAT WIRE FENCE ON PERMANENT CONCRETE POSTS.]
A few minutes later Bob's ears were greeted by the sound of animated conversation in a foreign tongue, not a word of which was intelligible to him, but every word of which seemed to please the speakers. A little later Tony came around the corner of the station, a huge suitcase under each arm, followed by a rather good-looking woman of medium height, and, like Tony, a true type of sunny Italy. She was dressed much better than Bob had expected to find her, and when Tony said, "This-a my wife, Mr. Bob," he was surprised to hear her say in very good English: "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Williams," letting her gaze fall as she greeted him.
As soon as Bob had recovered from his surprise, he jumped down from the seat, opened the door of the tonneau and helped her into the car, an act of courtesy which the smiling eyes of Tony quickly acknowledged. One of the suitcases was put on the empty front seat of the car and the other was placed on end between Tony and his wife in the tonneau, and then they started for the farm.
While Tony and his wife carried on an animated conversation in Italian, Bob was not without his own thoughts. He was trying to figure out how Tony, who had difficulty in expressing his ideas in English, should happen to have such a good-looking English-speaking Italian wife. He was not aware that many of the American-born Italian boys and girls receive high school educations, and, of course, he didn't know that Tony, who had been born in Italy, should have met in the house of a distant relative, a young woman who had had these advantages, and who should have found in the good-natured Tony, with his foreign manners, the object of her love. He was wondering, too, how she might like farm work and how his Aunt Bettie might like her.
He didn't have long to wait, for now that the roads were getting dry and better, he made the trip in less than twenty minutes and they were soon speeding up the new driveway to the house. He jumped out of the car, and taking one of the suitcases conducted Tony and his wife to his aunt, who had come out on the porch to greet them, and he noticed that she was as much surprised as he had been when Tony blushingly said:
"This-a my wife, Mrs. Williams," and she had replied:
"I'm pleased to know you, Mrs. Williams," extending her hand. "My name is Maria Martinelli," she added. "Tony has been telling me what a fine place you have here, and how kind you've been to him. I'm sure I'll be very happy working for you."
"Well, we do like Tony and I believe he likes us, and I hope you'll like us also," Aunt Bettie replied.
Tony now started for his room, the suitcases under his arms.
"We haven't Tony's room very well fixed up yet," Mrs. Williams continued, as Tony's wife followed him up the stairs, "but you and I can take care of that in the next few days."
Bob felt sure that his Aunt Bettie had already established pleasant relations with her new assistant, and whistled merrily as he changed into his working clothes.
When he returned to the hen house he was surprised to see some one in a brand new suit of funny-looking overalls sitting on the gravel pile waiting for him. As he came near, the stranger arose and looked toward him, but it was not until he got within a few feet that he recognized in the figure before him Ruth Thomas.
"Aunt Bettie said she'd let me help you with the concrete, Bob, so I put on these. How do you like my farmerette clothes?" she, asked smiling.
"Well, you surprised me, all right," laughed Bob, as, for the first time in his life, he saw a girl dressed in man's clothes.
"What do you do first, Bob?" she asked, going over to the mixer and pulling on the levers; "put in the water or the cement?"
"Neither," said Bob, still trying to decide whether he approved of her manner of dress or not. "We've all the concrete mixed that we need until we finish setting up the forms at the south end."
"Give me a hammer then, and I'll help drive the nails," she said, coming round to where Bob was leveling up some of the forms. "All right, drive a nail in there," he said, indicating the end of a brace that leaned against the forms.
Ruth took the hammer and tapped the nail gently, succeeding in starting it, then she raised the hammer and struck hard. The hammer descended squarely on the nail, but not the nail in the brace, but the nail on her left thumb. With a cry of pain she dropped the hammer and tried hard to keep back the tears.
"You'll have—to—excuse—me, Bob, until—I go—to the house and tie this up," she said, hesitatingly, "but as soon as Aunt Bettie puts something on it, I'll be back," and as she disappeared Bob heard her choking back her sobs.
His sympathy struggled for a few moments with his humor, but the latter got the better of him, and as soon as Ruth got well out of hearing, he couldn't refrain any longer from laughing at the funny figure she cut in her new clothes and the abrupt ending to her ambition to help build the hen house.
He found that he couldn't get along very well with the forms by himself, so he decided to knock off until after dinner. He was crossing over to the barn, where he met Ruth still dressed in her overalls, her thumb tied up, coming into the barnyard with her cousin Edith.
"We thought we'd like to look over the barn until my thumb quits hurting," called Ruth.
"All right," said Bob, and he conducted them into the thrashing floor where he explained how a barn was built and where the hay was kept and how they fed the different horses and cattle from the thrashing floor. Most of the mows were now almost empty and the barn had the appearance of great size.
"I'm going to climb up into the hay mow," said Ruth, as she started for the ladder.
"Why do you want to go up there, Ruth?" asked Edith.
"Oh, I want to see what the place looks like," replied Ruth, as she nimbly climbed the ladder and stepped off into the mow.
"Come on up, it's fine up here," she called.
Bob quickly followed her and a moment later Edith joined them.
Pausing there for a few minutes, they climbed over into another mow and looked out through a window on the side of the barn.
"Why, we can get on the roof from here," said Ruth.
"Yes," said Bob, "we can."
"Let's go out then," she said.
"But you might slide off," warned Bob.
"No danger of that," replied Ruth; "we've got our sneakers on."
So he crawled through the window and standing on the roof first helped
Ruth and then Edith through.
"It isn't as steep as it looks from the ground, and I'm going on up to the top," said Ruth.
Bob helped Edith up and they sat on the ridge for several minutes looking out over the farm, Bob pointing out to them the places of interest, and telling them the story of how the new dam and ditch came to be built. As they sat there, they noticed their uncle coming up the lane and that he had already reached the foot of the hill.
"Why, there comes Uncle Joe," shouted Ruth, as she started running down the side of the barn toward him, on which side a lean-to was built, and beyond which stood last year's straw stack, the top about even with the roof of the lean-to.
"Come on, Edith, I'm going to jump off the roof on to the straw stack," she shouted, and before Bob could stop her she had jumped and landed on the stack.
"It didn't seem so difficult, Bob," said Edith, and she also started running down the side. "I guess I can make it, too," she called, and leaped on to the stack, where Bob joined them a moment later.
The three stood waving their hands and shouting to their uncle. Suddenly Ruth exclaimed: "I'm going to slide down the side of the stack," and moved over to the side nearest to her uncle, who, seeing her intention, stood up in the wagon and shook the whip at her, warning her not to do so. Ruth only took his warning as a dare, and throwing her arms high over her head with a loud shout started to slide down the side of the stack. Now the stack had furnished feed for the cattle all winter and they had eaten under the edges, so that it was like a huge toadstool. From his position in the lane, her uncle saw what Ruth could not see from the top—that there were cattle under the edge. As Ruth came noisily down the side her shouting caused a cow standing under the edge of the stack to come running out. The two met just at the edge of the stack, Ruth landing squarely on the cow's back, her back to her head.
With a snort and a plunge, the cow started to race across the barnyard, and it was hard to tell which was the more surprised—Ruth or the cow. In her eagerness to get rid of her unexpected burden, the cow threw her hindquarters from side to side, as she ran—a motion that seemed to be exactly timed with Ruth's endeavor to fall off on that particular side, as each sudden change threw her into a vertical position again.
So with her hands on the cow's back and rolling from side to side she managed to maintain her seat, until the cow, seeing she was unable to get rid of her burden, ran for a black walnut tree, which stood near the old pump. She ran close against this tree and Ruth came shooting from the cow's back, much like a big frog jumping into a pond, landing unhurt on all fours on the soft litter of the barnyard.
Edith and Bob were still standing on top of the straw stack rocking with laughter at the ridiculous figure cut by Ruth, while their uncle stopped the team and hurried up the bank as fast as he could go. He was the first to get to Ruth as she picked herself up and began brushing off the dust.
Then Bob slid over the side of the stack to make sure there were no more cattle in the way, and a few minutes later was joined by Edith. They hurried forward together to where Ruth was standing and found, with the exception of a bruise on her chin and a rent in one sleeve, where it had rubbed along the ground, she was unhurt and laughing as merrily as the rest.
"Say, Ruth," said her uncle, seeing she was uninjured, "next time you want to ride one of the cows, let me know and I'll get you a saddle, or maybe you'd rather try one of the horses."
"Oh, I didn't get hurt a bit, Uncle Joe," she laughed, "and it really was lots of fun."