Free The Cross Timbers by Edward Everett Dale Page B

delighted to have them with us. Ava was only nineteen years old, while John was about twenty-seven. She was a gay, lively girl, the oldest of a bevy of sisters ranging from seventeen to three or four years of age, though she had an older brother, who was married and lived in Dallas.
    As the oldest of so many sisters, Ava had been forced to assume a measure of responsibility in her parents’ household. Shewas an excellent cook and a remarkably good housekeeper. Her big snowy loaves of homemade bread, six-layer chocolate cakes, golden-brown doughnuts, and luscious pies were most welcome additions to our bachelor fare of the past year. To our great distress, a late freeze wiped out our crop of peaches, but we had berries and the products of a big garden.
    A couple of months after John and Ava joined us, Ava’s mother and a seven- or eight-year-old daughter, Minnie, came to see us. They had gone to Dallas to visit the son and family and were returning to their home in Vernon, Texas, with a stop-off to see Ava and the family into which she had married. We all liked Ava’s mother, Mrs. Brown, very much. Apparently she largely supported her family by keeping boarders, while her husband, a more or less worthless old fellow, contributed a little by working at odd jobs that he could find.
    Mrs. Brown stayed only a day or so but left Minnie with us for the summer, which pleased Ava and me very much. Minnie was a nice kid, and because I was two or three years older she came to regard me as the fountainhead of knowledge and wisdom. This was a new role for me, which I savored to the fullest. Hitherto I had been the one to seek knowledge from George by asking numerous questions, which he never failed to answer.
    With John to help with the work, even the addition of twenty acres of cotton did not require my spending as much time in the field as usual. As a result, I helped Ava with the housework, with Minnie as my able assistant. I soon found that she liked stories and when we were working or playing alone she proved an enthusiastic audience for my made-up narratives, usually aboutnations of Pygmies about a foot tall. These little people often engaged in wars, in which a part of the troops rode into battle mounted on jack rabbits! Minnie even told some stories of her own, in which her only toy, a “sleepy doll” named Pearl, was always a leading character.
    When the time came to chop cotton, I had to lend a hand part of the time. Knowing that our scholarly brother John had read many more books than we had, George asked him to tell us one of his favorite novels. John was willing but said that he would rather tell an original story. That suited us exactly; for the next few months he and George, when working in the field, took turns in relating some amazing narratives. I was not able to hear all of these, but new ones were started in the fall when we began picking cotton, which kept all three of us in the field all day.
    The summer slipped by as if on fleet wings. When it became intensely hot our father built a brush arbor in the back yard. We moved the dining table out of the steaming hot kitchen and set it up under this shady arbor, which made eating our meals and the aftermath of washing the dishes far more comfortable. As we had no peaches to prepare for drying, we all had more leisure than in previous summers. Minnie was a good playmate as well as a good listener to my stories, and I was truly sorry when late in August two of her older sisters, who had been visiting in Dallas, came by with instructions from their mother to take her home.
    Ava returned to Greer County in October, going to Vernon by train, where she was met by Henry. John stayed another month to finish picking the cotton crop. He then bought an old wagonand a yoke of oxen, and drove to Navajoe. This must have given Ava ample time to put their sod house in order, for travel by ox team was indeed slow.
    Some of the stories told by John and George were truly