d had lived all her life among
the rocks and the sage and the stunted cedars and huge, gray hills of
Idaho. Meet her with her pink sunbonnet hanging down the back of her
neck and her big eyes taking in the squalidness of Marthy's crude
kitchen in the Cove, and her terrible directness of speech hitting
squarely the things she saw that were different from her own immaculate
home. Of course, if you don't care for children, you may skip a
chapter and meet her later when she was eighteen--but I really wish you
would consent to know her at ten.

"Mommie makes cookies with a raising in the middle. She gives me two
sometimes when the Bill of me has been workin' like the deuce with dad;
one for Billy and one for Louise. When I'm twelve, Mommie's goin' to
let the Louise of me make cookies all myself and put a raising on top.
I'll put two on top of one and bring it over for you, Marthy. And--"
Billy Louise was terribly outspoken at times--"I'll put four raisings
on another one for Jase, 'cause he don't have any nice times with you.
Don't you ever make cookies with raisings on 'em, Marthy? I'm hungry
as a coyote--and I ain't used to eating just bread and the kinda butter
you have. Mom says you don't work it enough. She says you are too
scared of water, and the buttermilk ain't all worked out, so that's why
it tastes so funny. Does Jase like that kind of butter, Marthy?"

"If your mother had to do the outside work as well as the inside, mebbe
she wouldn't work her butter so awful much, either. I dunno whether
Jase likes it or not. He eats it," Marthy stated grimly.

Billy Louise sighed. "Well, of course he's awful lazy. Daddy says so.
I guess I won't put but one raising on Jase's cookie when I'm twelve.
Has Jase gone fishing again, Marthy?"

A gleam of satisfaction brightened Marthy's hard, blue eyes. "No, he
ain't. He's in the root suller. You want some bread and some nice,
new honey, Billy Louise? I jest took it outa the hive this morning.
When you go home, I'll send some to your maw if you can carry it."

"Sure! I can carry anything that's good. If you put it on thick, so I
can't taste the bread, I'll eat it. Say, you like me, don't you,
Marthy?"

"Yes," said Marthy, turning her back on the slim, wide-eyed girl, "I
like yuh, Billy Louise."

"You sound like you wish you didn't," Billy Louise remarked. Even at
ten Billy Louise was keenly sensitive to tones and glances and that
intangible thing we call