There was a box of antiquated hats in the attic. Beth and Helen at once set up a millinery shop and sewed braids and trimmed hats until their fingers were sore. They had quite a fine assortment before they had finished. It was only too bad that they had no customers and were forced to buy their own goods.
Winter months in the country are never propitious for visiting unless one is able to keep a driving horse. The people at Shintown had only the work horses. During the coldest months these were taken to town to haul ice from the river to the big store houses, and so were unavailable. So the folks of Shintown ploughed their own way through the snow to church or Sunday-school which was always held in the school-house.
Eliza caught glimpses of Mrs. Burtsch and tried to speak to her, but the offended lady would accept no overtures. She took her place opposite Eliza and never looked in her direction. When Beth after services would have run after Rose, Mrs. Burtsch drew her offspring away with, “Come, Rose, this instant. Hain’t I told you that I want you to be particular who you are friends with.”
Even at the sauer-kraut supper, which was the annual event for the last week in November, when money was raised to pay the minister’s salary, Mrs. Burtsch ignored her neighbors of the old Wells place. Eliza was washing dishes and Mrs. Burtsch carrying plates heaped with pork, sauer-kraut and mashed potatoes.
After several attempts, Eliza gave up and accepted Mrs. Burtsch’s attitude as a matter of course. Since the day when Beth had fluffed her hair and stuck sweet peas in it, Eliza had kept it so. The garden flowers had all gone. There were plenty of house plants at the Wells place, however. The evening of the supper, Beth stuck a pink geranium in her foster-mother’s hair.
“You’ll be the very sweetest one at the party Adee,” said Beth.
She was a true prophet. Eliza’s work and the overheated room had given her cheeks the same tint as the flower in her hair.
“Eliza Wells haint so bad looking,” said Sam Houston to some one near him. “It’s wonderful how she does keep her looks. She’s thirty-five if she’s a day.”
More than one pair of eyes were attracted toward her. Mrs. Kilgore sighed when she overheard some one mention Eliza’s fine coloring. She shook her head sadly. “I don’t like the looks of it,” she said. “Old Sally Caldwell, her great aunt by marriage on her father’s side, had just such high coloring and she was took off sudden as could be with galloping consumption. You can’t tell me. Such things are inherited. Mark my words, Eliza Wells will be took off before the year is out. It hain’t natural. A woman ought to look a little faded by the time she’s Eliza’s age. It’s only natural that she should.”
“Don’t let that worry you none,” laughed Mrs. Burtsch in her bitter, cynical fashion. “Those red cheeks won’t have nothing to do with Eliza’s going off unless she goes off with just plumb foolishness. We could all be blooming out and looking like young colts if we wanted to spend our money at a drug-store. Pink cheeks! Buy them at twenty-five cents a bottle at Swain’s drug-store.”