This admonition, so glibly mouthed by so many people in the past few days, now was uttered once too often. Selina’s nerves snapped. A surprised German truck farmer found himself being harangued from the driver’s seat of a vegetable wagon by an irate and fluent woman in a mashed black hat.
“Don’t talk to me like that, you great stupid! What good does it do a woman to stay home in her kitchen if she’s going to starve there, and her boy with her! Staying home in my kitchen won’t earn me any money. I’m here to sell the vegetables I helped raise and I’m going to do it. Get out of my way, you. Go along about your business or I’ll report you to Mike, the street policeman.”
Now she clambered over the wagon wheel to unhitch the tired horses. It is impossible to tell what interpretation the dumfounded north-sider put upon her movements. Certainly he had nothing to fear from this small gaunt creature with the blazing eyes. Nevertheless as he gathered up his reins terror was writ large on his rubicund face.
“Teufel! What a woman!” Was off in a clatter of wheels and hoofs on the cobblestones.
Selina unharnessed swiftly. “You stay here, Dirk, with Pom. Mother’ll be back in a minute.” She marched down the street driving the horses to the barns where, for twenty-five cents, the animals were to be housed in more comfort than their owner. She returned to find Dirk deep in conversation with two young women in red shirtwaists, plaid skirts that swept the ground, and sailor hats tipped at a saucy angle over pyramidal pompadours.
“I can’t make any sense out of it, can you, Elsie? Sounds like Dirt to me, but nobody’s going to name a kid that, are they? Stands to reason.”
“Oh, come on. Your name’ll be mud first thing you know. Here it’s after nine already and not a——” she turned and saw Selina’s white face.
“There’s my mother,” said Dirk, triumphantly, pointing. The three women looked at each other. Two saw the pathetic hat and the dowdy clothes, and knew. One saw the red shirtwaists and the loose red lips, and knew.
“We was just talking to the kid,” said the girl who had been puzzled by Dirk’s name. Her tone was defensive. “Just asking him his name, and like that.”
“His name is Dirk,” said Selina, mildly. “It’s a Dutch name—Holland, you know. We’re from out High Prairie way, south. Dirk DeJong. I’m Mrs. DeJong.”