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A DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING


[Illustration: Cosma]


A DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING

by

ZONA GALE

Author of
Friendship Village, When I Was a Little Girl
Neighborhood Stories, etc.

Illustrated by W. B. King







Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers

Copyright 1917
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Book Manufacturers
Brooklyn, N. Y.




A Daughter of the Morning




CHAPTER I


I found this paper on the cellar shelf. It come around the boys' new
overalls. When I was cutting it up in sheets with the butcher knife on
the kitchen table, Ma come in, and she says:

"What you doin' _now_?"

The way she says "now" made me feel like I've felt before--mad and ready
to fly. So I says it right out, that I'd meant to keep a secret. I says:

"I'm makin' me a book."

"Book!" she says. "For the receipts you know?" she says, and laughed
like she knows how. I hate cooking, and she knows it.

I went on tying it up.

"Be writing a book next, I s'pose," says Ma, and laughed again.

"It ain't that kind of a book," I says. "This is just to keep track."

"Well, you'd best be doing something useful," says Ma. "Go out and pull
up some radishes for your Pa's supper."

I went on tying up the sheets, though, with pink string that come around
Pa's patent medicine. When it was done I run my hand over the page, and
I liked the feeling on my hand. Then I saw Ma coming up the back steps
with the radishes. I was going to say something, because I hadn't gone
to get them, but she says:

"Nobody ever tries to save me a foot of travelin' around."

And then I didn't care whether I said it or not. So I kept still. She
washed off the radishes, bending over the sink that's in too low. She'd
wet the front of her skirt with some suds of something she'd washed out,
and her cuffs was wet, and her hair was coming down.

"It's rack around from morning till night," she says, "doing for folks
that don't care about anything so's they get their stomachs filled."

"You might talk," I says, "if you was Mis' Keddie Bingy."

"Why? Has anything more happened to her?" Ma asked.

"Nothing new," I says. "Keddie was drinking all over the house last
night. I heard him singing and swearing--and once I heard her scream."

"He'll kill her yet," says Ma. "And then she'll be through with it. I'm
so tired to-night I wisht I was dead. All day long I've been at
it--floors to mop, dinner to get, water to lug."

"Quit going on about it, Ma," I says.

"You're a pretty one to talk to me like that," says Ma.

She set the radishes on the kitchen table and went to the back door. One
of her shoes dragged at the heel, and a piece of her skirt hung below
her dress.

"Jim!" she shouted, "your supper's ready. Come along and eat it,"--and
stood there twisting her hair up.

Pa come up on the porch in a minute. His feet were all mud from the
fields, and the minute he stepped on Ma's clean floor she begun on him.
He never said a word, but he tracked back and forth from the wash bench
to the water pail, making his big black footprints every step. I should
think she _would_ have been mad. But she said what she said about half a
dozen times--not mad, only just whining and complaining and like she
expected it. The trouble was, she said it so many times.

"When you go on so, I don't care how I track up," says Pa, and dropped
down to the table. He filled up his plate and doubled down over it, and
Ma and I got ours.

"What was you and Stacy talkin' about so long over the fence?" Ma says,
after a while.

"It's no concern of yours," says Pa. "But I'll tell ye, just to show ye
what some women have to put up with. Keddie Bingy hit her over the head
with a dish in the night. It's laid her up, and he's down to the Dew
Drop Inn, filling himself full."

"She's used to it by this time, I guess," Ma says. "Just as well take
it all at once as die by inches, _I_ say."

"Trot out your pie," says Pa.

As soon as I could after we'd done the dishes, I took my book up to the
room. Ma and I slept together. Pa had the bedroom off the dining-room. I
had the bottom bureau drawer to myself for my clothes. I put my book in
there, and I found a pencil in the machine drawer, and I put that by it.
I'd wanted to make the book for a long time, to set down thoughts in,
and keep track of the different things. But I didn't feel like making
the book any more by the time I got it all ready. I went to laying out
my underclothes in the drawer so's the lace edge would show on all of
'em that had it.

Ma come to the side door and called me.

"Cossy," she says, "is Luke comin' to-night?"

"I s'pose so," I says.

"Well, then, you go right straight over to Mis' Bingy's before he gets
here," Ma says.

I went down the stairs--they had a blotched carpet that I hated because
it looked like raw meat and gristle.

"Why don't you go yourself?" I says.

"Because Mis' Bingy'll be ashamed before me," she says; "but she won't
think you know about it. Take her this."

I took the loaf of steam brown bread.

"If Luke comes," I says, "have him walk along after me."

The way to Mis' Bingy's was longer to go by the road, or short through
the wood-lot. I went by the road, because I thought maybe I might meet
somebody. The worst of the farm wasn't only the work. It was never
seein' anybody. I only met a few wagons, and none of 'em stopped to say
anything. Lena Curtsy went by, dressed up in black-and-white, with a
long veil. She looks like a circus rider, not only Sundays but every
day. But Luke likes the look of her, he said so.

"You're goin' the wrong way, Cossy!" she calls out.

"No, I ain't, either," I says, short enough. I can't bear the sight of
her. And yet, if I have anything to brag about, it's always her I want
to brag it to.

Just when I turned off to Bingy's, I met the boys. We never waited
supper for 'em, because sometimes they get home and sometimes they
don't. They were coming from the end of the street-car line, black from
the blast furnace.

"Where you goin', kid?" says Bert.

I nodded to the house.

"Well, then, tell her she'd better watch out for Bingy," says Henny.
"He's crazy drunk down to the Dew Drop. I wouldn't stay there if I was
her."

I ran the rest of the way to the Bingy house. I went round to the back
door. Mis' Bingy was in the kitchen, sitting on the edge of the bed. She
had the bed put up in the kitchen when the baby was born, and she'd kept
it