and burst into a most frightful fit of hysterical weeping.  She would not allow her father or her brothers to touch her, and when her mother tried to comfort her, she said “Go away, ma.  Don’t touch me!” Finally I went to her, and she caught my hand in hers and pressed it, and after I had got her to her feet—­the poor ragged waif, as limpsey as a rag, and wearing the patched remnants of the calico dress I had bought for her on the way into Iowa the spring before—­she broke down and cried on my shoulder.  She sobbed out that I was the only man she had ever known.  She wished to God she were a man like me.  The only way I could stop her was to tell her that her face ought to be washed; when I said that to her, she stopped her sitheing and soon began making herself pretty:  and she was quite gay on the road to my place, where I took them because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with them, though I knew that the whole family, not counting Rowena, couldn’t or wouldn’t do enough work to pay the board of their horse.

3

They hadn’t more than got there and eaten a solid meal, than Surajah asked me for tools so he could work on a patent mouse-trap he was inventing, and when I came in from work that evening, he was explaining it to Magnus Thorkelson, who had come over to borrow some sugar from me.  Magnus was pretending to listen, but he was asking his questions of Rowena, who stood by more than half convinced that Surrager had finally hit upon his great idea—­which was a mouse-trap that would always be baited, and with two compartments, one to catch the mice, and one to hold them after they were caught.  When they went into the second compartment, they tripped a little lever which opened the door for a new captive, and at the same time baited the trap again.

It seemed as if Magnus could not understand what Surajah said, but that Rowena’s speech was quite plain to him.  After that, he came over every evening and Rowena taught him to read in McGuffey’s Second Reader. I knew that Magnus had read this through time and again; but he said he could learn to speak the words better when Rowena taught him.  The fact was, though, that he was teaching her more than she him; but she never had a suspicion of this.  That evening Magnus came over and brought his fiddle.  Pa Fewkes was quite disappointed when Magnus said he could not play the Money Musk nor Turkey in the Straw, nor the Devil’s Dream, but when he went into one of his musical trances and played things with no tune to them but with a great deal of harmony, and some songs that almost made you cry, Rowena sat looking so lost to the world and dreamy that Magnus was moist about the eyes himself.  He shook hands with all of us when he went away, so as to get the chance to hold Rowena’s hand I guess.

Every day while they were there, Magnus came to see us; but did not act a bit like a boy who came sparking.  He did not ask Rowena to sit up with him, though I think she expected him to do so; but he talked with her about Norway, and his folks there, and how lonely it was on his farm, and of his hopes that one day he would be a well-to-do farmer.