2018.07.31

It's Tuesday.

Pa said that he had thought he would never get here. Ma rummaged among the stores he had brought, and spooned brown sugar into a tin cup. Pa had brought sugar from Independence. She told him that his coffee would be ready in a minute. Pa told them that it had rained between here and Independence, going and coming back, the mud had frozen between the spokes till the wheels were nearly solid, and he had had to get out and knock it loose, so the horses could pull the wagon, and it had seemed like they had no more than had started, when he had had to get out and do it again, and it had been all he could do to keep Pet and Patty coming against that wind, and they were so worn out that they could hardly stagger, and he had never seen such a wind and it cut like a knife. The wind had began while he was in town. People there told him he had better wait until it blew itself out, but he wanted to get home. He said that it beat him, and asked why they called a south wind a norther, and how a wind from the south could be so tarnation cold, and he had never seen anything like it, and down here in this country, the north end of a south wind was the coldest wind he had ever heard of. He drank his coffee and wiped his mustache with his handkerchief, and said that that hit the spot, and now he was beginning to thaw out. Then his eyes twinkled at Ma and he asked her to open the square package on the table. He asked her to be careful and not drop it. Ma stopped unwrapping it and said to Pa that he hadn’t done. Pa asked her to open it.