“I’d like to see them, dear, but at the same time they were foreigners too, or children of foreigners, immigrants from a far land. Can’t you understand what I mean? These newer families are like new blood to the country. It takes only a couple of generations to blend them in, Jean, and they bring new strength to us. Think what we get from the different nations. I remember out in California I had a wonderful girl friend whose people had been Polish exiles. That was a strange group of exiles who sought a haven in our land. There was Sienkiewicz, the great novelist, and many whose names I forget. Wanda was my girl friend’s name and my mother and aunts didn’t like me to be so friendly toward her because she was a foreigner, completely forgetting that they themselves had come from foreign extraction. I think that you children are very fortunate to be born in an age when these queer old earth lines, these race barriers, are being torn down and the idea of one world is coming forth. Up here in our lonely hills, we are going to face this same problem that all nations are coping with, and we in our small way can help open the gates of the future.”
“Why, Mother, I never heard you talk this way before,” Jean exclaimed. “You always seemed just sweet and feminine. I—why, somehow I never felt you were interested in such things.”
“If we mothers are not interested in them, who should be?” she asked, her eyes full of a beautiful tenderness and compassion. “And you are going to do your share right here in Elmhurst, making a circle that shall join together the hands of all these boys and girls from different races. We’ll give a party soon and get acquainted with them all. Now let’s pay attention to chickens, for I think this must be the house.”
Jean turned into a side drive leading around to a house that stood well back from the road. As Jean said afterwards, the house looked as if it had been outdoors all its life, it was so weatherbeaten and gray. “Ma” Parmelee bustled out to meet them, plump and busy as one of her own Plymouth Rocks.
“Twelve pullets and one rooster you want?” she said. “Well, I guess I can fix you up. I heard you folks had moved in down yonder.” She led the way out to the big barn, followed by the chickens. The great doors were wide open, and the barn floor was covered lightly with wisps of hay. “Ma” scattered a measure of grain over this, and let the hens scratch for it.
“I have to work hard for what I get, and they ought to, too,” she said pleasantly. “Now, we’ll take any that you like and put them into bags. I’m going to sell you my very best rooster. His name’s Jim Dandy and he’s all of that. He’s pure Rhode Island Red, and two years old. You don’t have to worry about hawks when he’s around.”
After the chickens were all safely in the bags and put into the trailer, “Ma” waved goodbye and told them not to forget the Finnish family that was moving into her house.
“I’m going to live with my married daughter, and these poor things don’t know a living soul up here. Do drive over and speak to them as neighbors. There’s a man and his widowed sister and her children. All God’s folks, you know.”
“Finns,” murmured Jean speculatively, as they drove away. “There’s a new blend to our community, Mom. I’ve always wanted to know someone from the Scandinavian countries and Sally told me there is a Swedish family here too.”
Spring seemed to descend on the land all at once in the next few days, as if she had quite made up her mind to come and sit awhile, Becky said. One day the earth still looked windswept and bare, and the next there seemed to be a green sheen over the land and the woods looked hazy and lacy with the delicate budding leaves.