Anna Shaw's bright dark eyes glowed with intense feeling. Like the maid of whom she had been reading, she had her vision—a vision of a large, happy life waiting for her—little, untaught backwoods girl though she was. Her book led the way down a charmed path into the world of dreams. For the time she forgot the drudgery of the days—the plowing and planting and hoeing about the stumps of their little clearing, the cutting of wood, the carrying of water. She walked back to the cabin that was home, with her head held high and her lips parted in a smile. But all at once she was brought back to real things with a rude bump.
"What have you been doing, Anna?" demanded her father, who stood waiting for her in the doorway.
"Reading, sir," the girl faltered.
"So you have been idling away precious hours at a time your mother has needed your help?" the stern voice went on accusingly. "What do you suppose the future will bring to one who has not proved 'faithful in little'?"
The girl looked at her father without speaking. She knew that her share in the work of the household was not "little." Her young hands hardened from rough toil twitched nervously; the injustice cut her to the quick. Couldn't her father imagine what holding down that claim in the woods had meant for the little family during the eighteen months that he and the two older boys had remained behind in the East? In his joy at securing the grant of land from the Government, he already pictured the well-conditioned farm that would one day be his and his children's. "The acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young oaks."
In a flash she saw as if it were yesterday the afternoon when their pathetic little caravan had at last reached the home that awaited them. She saw the frail, tired mother give one glance at the rude log hut in the stump-filled clearing, and then sink in a despairing heap on the dirt floor. It was but the hollow shell of a cabin—walls and roof, with square holes for door and windows gaping forlornly at the home-seekers. She heard the wolves and wildcats as she had on that first night when they had huddled together—helpless creatures from another world—not knowing if their watch-fires would keep the hungry beasts at bay. She saw parties of Indians stalk by in war-paint and feathers. She saw herself, a child of twelve, trudging wearily to the distant creek for water until the time when, with her brother's help, she dug a well. There was, too, the work of laying a floor and putting in doors and windows. Like Robinson Crusoe, she had served a turn at every trade; to-day that of carpenter or builder, to-morrow that of farmer, fisherman, or woodcutter.
As these pictures flashed before the eye of memory she looked at her father quietly, without a word of defense or self-pity. All she said was, "Father, some day I am going to college."
The little smile that curled his lips as he looked his astonishment drove her to another boast. The dreams of the free calm woods and the heroic Maid of Orleans had faded away. Somehow she longed to put forth her claim in a way to impress any one, even a man who felt that a girl ought not to want anything but drudging. "And before I die I shall be worth $10,000," she prophesied boldly.
However, the months that succeeded gave no sign of any change of fortune. A sudden storm turned a day of toil now and then into a red-letter day when one had chance to read the books that father had brought with him into the wilderness. Sometimes one could stretch at ease on the floor and dreamily scan the pages of the "Weekly" that papered the walls. There was always abundant opportunity in the busy hours that followed to reflect on what one had read—to compare, to contrast, and to apply, and so to annex for good and all the ideas that the books had to give.
It was clear, too, that there were many interesting things to be seen and enjoyed even in the most humdrum work-a-day round, if one were able to read real life as well as print. Could anything be more delightful than the way father would drop his hoe and run into the house to work out a problem concerning the yield of a certain number of kernels of corn? The days would go by while he calculated and speculated energetically over this problem and that, leaving such trivial tasks as planting and plowing to others. Then there were the weekend visitors. Often as many as ten or a dozen of the neighboring settlers—big lumbermen and farmers—would come on Saturday, to spend the night and Sunday listening to her father read. When it was delicately hinted that this was a tax on the family store of tallow dips, each man dutifully brought a candle to light the way to learning. It never seemed to occur, either to them or to the impractical father, who liked nothing better than reading and expounding, that the entertainment of so many guests was a severe tax on the strength and patience of the working members of the household.