The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather [rosie project .txt] 📗

racehorses and hunting-dogs. At this moment Giddy, freshly shaved and shampooed, his shirt shining with the highest polish known to Chinese laundrymen, his straw hat tipped over his right eye, thrust his head in at the door.

“What in hell⁠—” he brought out furiously. His good humored, sunburned face seemed fairly to swell with amazement and anger.

“That’s all right, Giddy,” Ray called in a conciliatory tone. “Nothing injured. I’ll put ’em all up again as I found ’em. Going to take some ladies down in the car tomorrow.”

Giddy scowled. He did not dispute the propriety of Ray’s measures, if there were to be ladies on board, but he felt injured. “I suppose you’ll expect me to behave like a Y.M.C.A. secretary,” he growled. “I can’t do my work and serve tea at the same time.”

“No need to have a tea-party,” said Ray with determined cheerfulness. “Mrs. Kronborg will bring the lunch, and it will be a darned good one.”

Giddy lounged against the car, holding his cigar between two thick fingers. “Then I guess she’ll get it,” he observed knowingly. “I don’t think your musical friend is much on the grub-box. Has to keep her hands white to tickle the ivories.” Giddy had nothing against Thea, but he felt cantankerous and wanted to get a rise out of Kennedy.

“Every man to his own job,” Ray replied agreeably, pulling his white shirt on over his head.

Giddy emitted smoke disdainfully. “I suppose so. The man that gets her will have to wear an apron and bake the pancakes. Well, some men like to mess about the kitchen.” He paused, but Ray was intent on getting into his clothes as quickly as possible. Giddy thought he could go a little further. “Of course, I don’t dispute your right to haul women in this car if you want to; but personally, so far as I’m concerned, I’d a good deal rather drink a can of tomatoes and do without the women and their lunch. I was never much enslaved to hard-boiled eggs, anyhow.”

“You’ll eat ’em tomorrow, all the same.” Ray’s tone had a steely glitter as he jumped out of the car, and Giddy stood aside to let him pass. He knew that Kennedy’s next reply would be delivered by hand. He had once seen Ray beat up a nasty fellow for insulting a Mexican woman who helped about the grub-car in the work train, and his fists had worked like two steel hammers. Giddy wasn’t looking for trouble.

At eight o’clock the next morning Ray greeted his ladies and helped them into the car. Giddy had put on a clean shirt and yellow pigskin gloves and was whistling his best. He considered Kennedy a fluke as a ladies’ man, and if there was to be a party, the honors had to be done by someone who wasn’t a blacksmith at small-talk. Giddy had, as Ray sarcastically admitted, “a local reputation as a jollier,” and he was fluent in gallant speeches of a not too-veiled nature. He insisted that Thea should take his seat in the cupola, opposite Ray’s, where she could look out over the country. Thea told him, as she clambered up, that she cared a good deal more about riding in that seat than about going to Denver. Ray was never so companionable and easy as when he sat chatting in the lookout of his little house on wheels. Good stories came to him, and interesting recollections. Thea had a great respect for the reports he had to write out, and for the telegrams that were handed to him at stations; for all the knowledge and experience it must take to run a freight train.

Giddy, down in the car, in the pauses of his work, made himself agreeable to Mrs. Kronborg.

“It’s a great rest to be where my family can’t get at me, Mr. Giddy,” she told him. “I thought you and Ray might have some housework here for me to look after, but I couldn’t improve any on this car.”

“Oh, we like to keep her neat,” returned Giddy glibly, winking up at Ray’s expressive back. “If you want to see a clean icebox, look at this one. Yes, Kennedy always carries fresh cream to eat on his oatmeal. I’m not particular. The tin cow’s good enough for me.”

“Most of you boys smoke so much that all victuals taste alike to you,” said Mrs. Kronborg. “I’ve got no religious scruples against smoking, but I couldn’t take as much interest cooking for a man that used tobacco. I guess it’s all right for bachelors who have to eat round.”

Mrs. Kronborg took off her hat and veil and made herself comfortable. She seldom had an opportunity to be idle, and she enjoyed it. She could sit for hours and watch the sage-hens fly up and the jackrabbits dart away from the track, without being bored. She wore a tan bombazine dress, made very plainly, and carried a roomy, worn, mother-of-the-family handbag.

Ray Kennedy always insisted that Mrs. Kronborg was “a fine-looking lady,” but this was not the common opinion in Moonstone. Ray had lived long enough among the Mexicans to dislike fussiness, to feel that there was something more attractive in ease of manner than in absentminded concern about hairpins and dabs of lace. He had learned to think that the way a woman stood, moved, sat in her chair, looked at you, was more important than the absence of wrinkles from her skirt. Ray had, indeed, such unusual perceptions in some directions, that one could not help wondering what he would have been if he had ever, as he said, had “half a chance.”

He was right; Mrs. Kronborg was a fine-looking woman. She was short and square, but her head was a real head, not a mere jerky termination of the body. It had some individuality apart from hats and hairpins. Her hair, Moonstone women admitted, would have been very pretty “on anybody else.” Frizzy bangs were worn then, but Mrs. Kronborg always dressed her hair in the same way, parted in the