“How goes it school teaching?”
“Oh—it goes pretty well.”
“You are little to be school teacher, anyway, ain’t you?”
“Little!” She drew herself up from her vantage point of the soap-box. “I’m bigger than you are.”
They laughed at that as at an exquisite piece of repartee.
Adam Oom’s gavel (a wooden potato masher) crashed for silence. “Ladies!” [Crash!] “And gents!” [Crash!] “Gents! Look what basket we’ve got here!”
Look indeed. A great hamper, grown so plethoric that it could no longer wear its cover. Its contents bellied into a mound smoothly covered with a fine white cloth whose glistening surface proclaimed it damask. A Himalaya among hampers. You knew that under that snowy crust lay gold that was fowl done crisply, succulently; emeralds in the form of gherkins; rubies that melted into strawberry preserves; cakes frosted like diamonds; to say nothing of such semi-precious jewels as potato salad; cheeses; sour cream to be spread on rye bread and butter; coffee cakes; crullers.
Crash! “The Widow Paarlenberg’s basket, ladies—and gents! The Widow Paarlenberg! I don’t know what’s in it. You don’t know what’s in it. We don’t have to know what’s in it. Who has eaten Widow Paarlenberg’s chicken once don’t have to know. Who has eaten Widow Paarlenberg’s cake once don’t have to know. What am I bid on Widow Paarlenberg’s basket! What am I bid! WhatmIbidwhatmIbidwhatmIbid!” [Crash!]
The widow herself, very handsome in black silk, her gold neck chain rising and falling richly with the little flurry that now agitated her broad bosom, was seated in a chair against the wall not five feet from the auctioneer’s stand. She bridled now, blushed, cast down her eyes, cast up her eyes, succeeded in looking as unconscious as a complaisant Turkish slave girl on the block.
Adam Ooms’s glance swept the hall. He leaned forward, his fox-like face fixed in a smile. From the widow herself, seated so prominently at his right, his gaze marked the young blades of the village; the old bucks; youths and widowers and bachelors. Here was the prize of the evening. Around, in a semi-circle, went his keen glance until it reached the tall figure towering in the doorway—reached it, and rested there. His gimlet eyes seemed to bore their way into Pervus DeJong’s steady stare. He raised his right arm aloft, brandishing the potato masher. The whole room fixed its gaze on the blond head in the doorway. “Speak up! Young men of High Prairie! Heh, you, Pervus DeJong! WhatmIbidwhatmIbidwhatmIbid!”