No, she was not lovely, but she was the only daughter of old
Ernest Haldeman, and the old man was not very strong.
Claude was the daily bulletin of the Gap. He knew whose cow died
the night before, who was at the strawberry dance, and all about
Abe Anderson's night in jail up at the Siding. If his coming was
welcome to the Kennedy's, who took the Bluff Siding Gimlet and
the county paper, how much the more cordial ought his greeting to
be at Haldeman's, where they only took the Milwaukee Weekly
Freiheit.
Nina in her poor way had longings and aspirations. She wanted to
marry "a Yankee," and not one of her own kind. She had a little
schooling obtained at the small brick shed under the towering
cottonwood tree at the corner of her father's farm; but her life had
been one of hard work and mighty little play. Her parents spoke in
German about the farm, and could speak English only very
brokenly. Her only brother had adventured into the foreign parts of
Pine County and had been killed in a sawmill. Her life was lonely
and hard.
She had suitors among the Germans, plenty of them, but she had a
disgust of them-considered as possible husbands-and though she
went to their beery dances occasionally, she had always in her
mind the ease, lightness, and color of Claude.
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