All the time
grandma was bringing girls with her to help, and making me work with
them when I helped. They were nice girls, too--Kittie, and Dose, Lizzie
Finster, and Zeruiah Strickler, and Amy Smith--all farmer girls. Grandma
was always talking about the wisdom of my marrying a farmer girl.
"The best thing about Christina," said she, "is that she is the daughter
of a farmer."
I struggled with this Christina idea, and tried to make it clear that
she was nothing to me, that it was just a joke. Grandma
Thorndyke smiled.
"Of course you'd say that," said she.
But the Christina myth grew wonderfully, and it made me more interesting
to the other girls.
"You look too high
For things close by,
And slight the things around you!"
So sang Zeruiah Strickler as she scrubbed my kitchen, and in pauses of
her cheerful and encouraging song told of the helplessness of men
without their women. I really believed her, in spite of my success in
getting along by myself.
"Why don't you bring Virginia out some day?" I asked on one of these
occasions, when it seemed to me that Grandma Thorndyke was making
herself just a little too frequent a visitor at my place.
"Miss Royall," said she, as if she had been speaking of the Queen of
Sheba, "is busy with her own circle of friends. She is now visiting at
Governor Wade's. She is almost a member of the family there. And her law
matters take up a good deal of her time, too. Mr.
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