Free Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright Page A

slowly, strangely, into dreams.
    â€œLook out!” shouted a loud voice behind her, and she lifted her head. Then she grabbed the wheel and held onto it in bewilderment. Could it be an earthquake? Was she dizzy? Because now the golden mountain had begun to move by itself. It was moving toward her, and towering above her, and suddenly beginning to slip slowly and then faster over and upon her, till she was engulfed, half smothered by dry, tickling, prickling yellow straw. She understood then that the pile must have become top-heavy and capsized.
    Eric came to her rescue, dug her out and brushed the clinging straw from her clothes.
    â€œThat was stupid of me,” said Garnet. She felt awful.
    â€œOh think nothing of it,” said Eric. “I should’ve been on the job instead of getting a drink. We’ll have it all piled up again in a jiffy anyway.”
    But Jay came towards her scowling.
    â€œWell for Pete’s sake!” he said angrily. “You certainly made a mess of it that time all right! Why don’t you stay home and help mother? Threshing isn’t anything for girls to be monkeying with anyway; home with a dish towel, that’s where you belong! This will slow up the whole works.”
    Garnet turned and ran across the hot fields. The oat stubble stood up like little lances and hurt her bare feet, and grasshoppers popped and scattered like sparks from a fire. Tears filled her eyes and made the meadow surge and swim before her in a golden flood.
    â€œHateful Jay! Mean, mean, mean,” she cried under her breath; “I won’t ever feel the same about him again. I hate him.”
    Oh Jay, what has happened to you, she thought. Jay who had been her best friend always, and who had considered her his equal in many things — well practically his equal anyway. Ever since Eric had come he had been different. And now just think how he had spoken to her! As if she were a baby, or a sissy, or somebody he didn’t like.
    She turned back towards the house and went up the path through the garden. Maybe her mother would make her feel all right again.
    The kitchen seemed to be filled with women. Mrs. Hauser and her sister were sitting fat and solid on a bench, and old Mrs. Eberhardt rocked and creaked in the rocking chair. Two Cardiff ladies were busy at the sink and about their feet Donald and a little Cardiff crawled and shouted. Mrs. Linden was opening the oven door and laughing at something someone had said. The air rang with women’s voices and the shouting of small children. Clearly this was no time to disturb her mother, and Garnet, unnoticed, stole up the stairway to her little room. It would be hot up there under the eaves, but it would be quiet at least and nobody would bother her. She pushed open the half closed door and stopped.
    There on her bed, fat, pleased with himself, and babbling, lay the youngest Hauser baby, Leroy. He was red and dimpled and fair-haired and Garnet had always liked him until today. But now she looked at him coldly as he waved his legs and arms, and showed his two teeth in a foolish smile, and she felt that she positively loathed him.
    â€œAll right!” said Garnet severely to the baby. “There’s no room for me in my own house, and they don’t want me out at the threshing, and I’ll just go away, that’s all. Just go away by myself!”
    She washed, combed her hair, and put on a blue dress and a pair of strapped shoes. The shoes felt stiff and uncomfortable to toes that had gone bare all summer, and there was starch in the collar of the dress that scratched her neck. She hated dresses anyway, and buttoning the difficult small buttons she hiccuped with sobs. No one has ever been so unhappy before, she thought to herself. Maybe they’ll all be sorry later on!
    In the shiny pocketbook that her grandmother had sent her for Christmas there was half a dollar, a new handkerchief, the silver thimble that she had found