CHAPTER XIII.
THE HARVESTING.
Kitty had no time to ask further explanation. Already there was an ox team driving up to the cabin and, scanning the prairies, she saw others on the way, so merely stopped to cry, eagerly:
“They’ve come! The folks have come!” before she hastened in with the butter and to see if she could in any way help Mercy dress for the great occasion.
She was just in time, for the plump housewife was vainly struggling to fasten the buttons of a new lilac calico gown which she had made:
“A teeny tiny mite too tight. I didn’t know I was gettin’ so fat, I really didn’t.”
“Oh! it’s all right, dear Mother Mercy. It looked just lovely that day you tried it on. I’ll help you. You’re all trembling and warm. That’s the reason it bothers.”
She was so deft and earnest in her efforts that Mercy submitted without protest, and in this manner succeeded in “making herself fit to be seen by folks” about the moment that they arrived to observe. Then everything else was forgotten, amid the greetings and gayety that followed. For out of what purported to be a task the whole community was making a frolic.
While the men repaired to the golden fields to reap the grain the women hurried to the smooth grassy place where the harvest-dinner was to be enjoyed out-of-doors.