And though it was not a highly diversified country, and many things were left for the hand of man to accomplish, still it took on a certain beauty. The broad belt of timber to the west stood up sentinel like, to the south there were various rises of ground; there were the broad prairies and the magnificent lake, beginning to be dotted with vessels of all the rather primitive kinds. The building of the Clarissa had been considered a great achievement, and was being followed by others.
Gardens came out in summer bravery. Many of them were an acre or two in extent. Apples and plums grew readily, indeed it seemed as if plums were indigenous to the soil. Smaller fruits were cultivated, and all those not likely to be killed with the hard cold winters.
Here and there you saw prairie schooners, as they were called, with a double team of oxen lumbering along with a load of logs from some more favorable point for the saw mill. Wheat fields waved in the sunshine, making billows like the sea. Cornfields green and strong shot up like armies. Rye and oats—everything grew as if by magic. Doors were wide open, and women sat spinning, or some one ran to and fro with nimble feet at the big wheel.
In another house was a loom, the warping bars hung with skeins of colored yarns, and the ceiling of the homely interior still ornamented with the remnants of winter provender, where there had been abundant storing. Children played around outside, older ones went to and from school, raced about in childish games, handed down from generation to generation. A neighbor woman in a faded blue gown and sunbonnet stopped to gossip awhile at some one's door as to who was "keepin' stiddy comp'ny," who had been buying a cow or putting up a shanty, or "dyein' of ther' yarn." Less than three quarters of a century ago they had dreams of greatness then, but they would have fainted to see this day.
The Little Girl had learned to spin and had a wheel. She had learned many other things as well, and some of the older people thought she was "fittin' to keep house a'thought any help." But M'liss was glad to come in daily, though now she brought a small bundle, rolled in an old shawl, which she generally deposited on a bench and stood a chair-back against it.
"I jest useter think it was orful to strap them little Injun babies on a board an' hang 'em to a tree, but I dunno. They want ter be made straight, an' fraish air is good fer 'em. I s'pose people'd think I was orful unhuman to do it, but lawsy a' massy me, what does anything like that want but jest to lay still an' grow till it gets some sense."
Ruth was not enchanted with the baby, though she berated herself for a kind of hard-heartedness. It had a funny little face screwed up to a point in the centre, with a sloping forehead and no chin to speak of, and it was a curious red brown.
"'Tain't no great beauty," M'liss admitted. "But I never see one that was. Ther's a big world fer 'em to grow good lookin' in if they hev the gift, an' if they hevn't, why, they hevn't, thet's all. I can't say I was eszatly hankerin' fer it, but it's here, an' sent fer some wise perpose, mebbe."
M'liss was very glad of the good meal and the chunk of pork or loaf of bread she earned. The Little Girl only went to school for half a day now, she was learning so many useful things at home to make her her father's housekeeper. He was always very tender to her I noticed, and thought her very smart.
Sometimes when we sat on the doorstep of an evening he would join the talk. His father and grandfather had been Revolutionary patriots. He had been to Boston and sailed from there to New York and back, and knew a good deal about the geography of the Eastern States. I brought out my store of knowledge, gleaned from traders who stopped at the warehouse. Some of the stories seemed too marvellous for belief, and now they are commonplace history.