Sam did not stop to wash, but went out to the barn. The woman,
however, hastily soused her face into the hard limestone water at
the sink and put the kettle on. Then she called the children. She
knew it was early, and they would need several callings. She
pushed breakfast forward, running over in her mind the things she
must have: two spools of thread, six yards of cotton flannel, a can
of coffee, and mittens for Kitty. These she must have-there were
oceans of things she needed.
The children soon came scudding down out of the darkness of the
upstairs to dress tumultuously at the kitchen stove. They humped
and shivered, holding up their bare feet from the cold floor, like
chickens in new fallen snow. They were irritable, and snarled and
snapped and struck like cats and dogs. Mrs. Markham stood it for a
while with mere commands to "hush up," but at last her patience
gave out, and she charged down on the struggling mob and cuffed
them right and left.
They ate their breakfast by lamplight, and when Sam went back to
his work around the barnyard it was scarcely dawn. The children,
left alone with their mother, began to tease her to let them go to
town also.
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