Lena was always knitting stockings for little brothers and sisters, and
even the Norwegian women, who disapproved of her, admitted that she was a
good daughter to her mother. As Tony said, she had been talked about. She
was accused of making Ole Benson lose the little sense he had--and that at
an age when she should still have been in pinafores.
[Illustration: Lena Lingard knitting stockings]
Ole lived in a leaky dugout somewhere at the edge of the settlement. He
was fat and lazy and discouraged, and bad luck had become a habit with
him. After he had had every other kind of misfortune, his wife, "Crazy
Mary," tried to set a neighbor's barn on fire, and was sent to the asylum
at Lincoln. She was kept there for a few months, then escaped and walked
all the way home, nearly two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding
in barns and haystacks by day. When she got back to the Norwegian
settlement, her poor feet were as hard as hoofs. She promised to be good,
and was allowed to stay at home--though every one realized she was as crazy
as ever, and she still ran about barefooted through the snow, telling her
domestic troubles to her neighbors.
Not long after Mary came back from the asylum, I heard a young Dane, who
was helping us to thrash, tell Jake and Otto that Chris Lingard's oldest
girl had put Ole Benson out of his head, until he had no more sense than
his crazy wife.
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