The Project Gutenberg eBook, One of Ours, by Willa Cather

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Title: One of Ours

Author: Willa Cather

Release Date: November 20, 2004 [eBook #2369]
[Date last updated: April 11, 2006]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE OF OURS***

One of Ours

by Willa Cather

Book One: On Lovely Creek

I.

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and
vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half
of the same bed.

"Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car."

"What for?"

"Why, aren't we going to the circus today?"

"Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled
the sheet up to his face, to shut out the light which was
beginning to come through the curtainless windows.

Claude rose and dressed,--a simple operation which took very
little time. He crept down two flights of stairs, feeling his way
in the dusk, his red hair standing up in peaks, like a cock's
comb. He went through the kitchen into the adjoining washroom,
which held two porcelain stands with running water. Everybody had
washed before going to bed, apparently, and the bowls were ringed
with a dark sediment which the hard, alkaline water had not
dissolved. Shutting the door on this disorder, he turned back to
the kitchen, took Mahailey's tin basin, doused his face and head
in cold water, and began to plaster down his wet hair.

Old Mahailey herself came in from the yard, with her apron full
of corn-cobs to start a fire in the kitchen stove. She smiled at
him in the foolish fond way she often had with him when they were
alone.

"What air you gittin' up for a-ready, boy? You goin' to the
circus before breakfast? Don't you make no noise, else you'll
have 'em all down here before I git my fire a-goin'."

"All right, Mahailey." Claude caught up his cap and ran out of
doors, down the hillside toward the barn. The sun popped up over
the edge of the prairie like a broad, smiling face; the light
poured across the close-cropped August pastures and the hilly,
timbered windings of Lovely Creek, a clear little stream with a
sand bottom, that curled and twisted playfu