"
He glanced at his reluctant little brother. "I guess we'd better walk. But
we'll open the gate for you."
I drove along the side-road and they followed slowly behind. When I pulled
up at the windmill, another boy, barefooted and curly-headed, ran out of
the barn to tie my team for me. He was a handsome one, this chap,
fair-skinned and freckled, with red cheeks and a ruddy pelt as thick as a
lamb's wool, growing down on his neck in little tufts. He tied my team
with two flourishes of his hands, and nodded when I asked him if his
mother was at home. As he glanced at me, his face dimpled with a seizure
of irrelevant merriment, and he shot up the windmill tower with a
lightness that struck me as disdainful. I knew he was peering down at me
as I walked toward the house.
Ducks and geese ran quacking across my path. White cats were sunning
themselves among yellow pumpkins on the porch steps. I looked through the
wire screen into a big, light kitchen with a white floor. I saw a long
table, rows of wooden chairs against the wall, and a shining range in one
corner. Two girls were washing dishes at the sink, laughing and
chattering, and a little one, in a short pinafore, sat on a stool playing
with a rag baby. When I asked for their mother, one of the girls dropped
her towel, ran across the floor with noiseless bare feet, and disappeared.
The older one, who wore shoes and stockings, came to the door to admit me.
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