“Two things. The first was that I was afraid a rival shop might start before you could begin; and the second was that I was so sorry for the men with no proper food when their day’s work was done. It is enough to make any ordinary man take to drink when he can’t get decent food to eat; and the whisky sold by that man at the Settlement saloon is just rank poison and nothing else, if you’ll believe me,” said Mrs. Peters. Then she turned to attend to the wants of two men who had just entered the kitchen.
“We want some supper, if you please, ma’am. What have you got?” asked the foremost man, sniffing hungrily, for the odours of the little kitchen were very appetizing to hungry men.
“Not much to-night except pies and stew. We haven’t got straight yet; but just wait until next week and then you’ll see a difference,” replied Mrs. Peters, with a wag of her head towards Nell, as if to emphasize where the difference came in.
“Well, we can’t very well wait until next week for our supper, so we’ll take what you’ve got and be thankful,” said the man. And the two walked off with a couple of tin basins of stew, two pies, and a small loaf of bread, for which they paid half a dollar, and thought themselves well off.
“You must come over to our place to sleep; you just can’t lie on the boards,” Mrs. Peters had said in hospitable invitation, although the little house at the depot was already as full as it could hold with any degree of comfort.
But neither Nell nor Gertrude would consent to this, and they spent the night comfortably enough each rolled in a rug and lying on a big sack of shavings, while Patsey had a similar sack all to himself in the kitchen.
Since then the days had been full of hard and constant work. It was fortunate for Nell that by this time she had regained the use of her hand. Leaving Gertrude to unpack and arrange the furniture she had devoted herself to the business of catering for her numerous customers, and had found more than enough to keep her busy.
As soon as the house had been arranged in comfortable order, Gertrude departed to fetch her mother and the children from Nine Springs, while Patsey remained to help Nell.
The question of school loomed largely in their minds just now—the Settlement school was three miles away. But with the Peters children and the young Lorimers, there were nearly enough children to start a school near the depot. If another family came to live at Camp’s Gulch this might be done; meanwhile it seemed easier for Patsey to go up and down to Bratley on the cars every day than for him to wear out his boots on the long walk to the Settlement.
Just at present he was not attending school, but had been out picking berries with which to make pies the next day. Nell’s customers appeared perfectly indifferent as to what pies were made of; the main thing was to get a pie.