Up to my tenth birthday we could not afford the newspaper subscription. But after that times were a little better, and the Boston Transcript began to come at irregular intervals. It formed our only tie with civilization, except for the occasional purely personal letter from “back home.”
When I was fourteen three tremendous events had marked my life: sunlight through a window-pane; the logrolling on the river when father added two rooms to our cabin; and the night I thought mother would die and leave me the only woman in eighteen miles.
But the fourth event was the most tremendous. One night father hurried in without even waiting to unload or water his team. He seemed excited, and handed my mother a letter. Our Great-Aunt Martha had willed father her household goods and personal belongings and a modest sum that to us was a fortune. Some one back East “awaited his instructions.” Followed many discussions, but in the end my mother gained her way. Great-Aunt Martha's house goods were sold at auction. Father, however, insisted that her “personal belongings” be shipped to Wisconsin.
After a long, long wait, one day father and I rose at daybreak and rode thirty-six miles in a springless wagon, over ranchmen's roads (“the giant's vertebrae,” Jim Hill's men called it) to the nearest express station, returning with a trunk and two packing cases. It was a solemn moment when the first box was opened. Then mother gave a cry of delight. Sheets and bedspreads edged with lace! Real linen pillowcases with crocheted edgings. Soft woolen blankets and bright handmade quilts. Two heavy, lustrous table-cloths and two dozen napkins, one white set hemmed, and one red-and-white, bordered with a soft fringe.
What the world calls wealth has come to me in after years. Nothing ever equaled in my eyes the priceless value of Great-Aunt Martha's “personal belongings.”
I was in a seventh heaven of delight. My father picked up the books and began to read, paying no attention to our ecstasies over dresses and ribbons, the boxful of laces, or the little shell-covered case holding a few ornaments in gold and silver and jet.
We women did not stop until we had explored every corner of that trunk and the two packing boxes. Then I picked up a napkin.
“What are these for?” I asked curiously.
My father slammed his book shut. I had never seen such a look on his face.
“How old are you, Mary?” he demanded suddenly.