s. There
were warm fires, clean soft beds, and a real Christmas dinner. There was
corn-popping, and bob-sledding with jingling bells behind a prancing
team, with Imbert and Ida Mary sitting together as Imbert drove.

Imbert's devotion to Ida was casually accepted by the prairie folk. They
all knew him--a likable, steady young fellow, who seemed to have a way
with the girls. Homestead girls came and went, and flirtations to break
the monotony while they stayed were nothing unusual.

But when Imbert paid $10 for the teacher's box at a box-social held at
the schoolhouse one night, the old-timers gaped. It looked, they said,
as if that little tenderfoot teacher had Imbert Miller lariated. It beat
thunder how the western fellows did fall for eastern schoolmarms. Ten
dollars for a shoe box, without knowing what there was in it! Most of
the bachelor homesteaders bought boxes with a view to what they would
get to eat--potato salad and homemade cake.

Because we were no longer oppressed by a sense of loneliness, Ida and I
came to love best of all the evenings at home in the tiny shack with
its gay cushions and bright curtains; we enjoyed the good hot supper of
spuds and bacon, or rabbit which some neighbor had brought; hot
biscuits, chokecherry jelly and coffee simmering gently on the back of
the stove. Such a feast, however, was only on rare occasions. After
supper, with the world shut out, we read the mail from home. "You've
done so well, girls, I'm proud of you," our father wrote. "I'll be
looking to see you home next spring."

I believe Ida Mary was happier that winter than she had ever been, and
her work was easier for her than mine for me, with fewer hardships,
thanks to the Dunns and to Imbert who did much to make it easier for
her.

During that whole winter the Randalls were the mainstay of the
community. They were one of those families who are the backbone of the
old West, always ready to serve their neighbors. They were like old
trees standing alone on the prairie, that have weathered the storms and
grown strong, with their sheltering branches outspread.

When there were signs of a blizzard in the air, it was the Randalls who
sent out their sleighs to round up the women who lived alone and bring
them in to shelter. When a doctor was needed, the Randalls got one.
Young Mrs. Layton was having her first baby sooner than she expected. It
was a black night, twenty below zero. The makeshift telephone line was
out of o