oodwork was something perfectly marvellous. I didn't know what kind
of wood it was, but a man who could turn his hand to anything, painted
it. First, he put on a pale yellow coat and let it dry. Then he added
wood brown, and while it was wet, with a coarse toothed comb, a rag,
and his fingers, he imitated the grain, the even wood, and knotholes of
dressed lumber, until many a time I found myself staring steadily at a
knot to see if a worm wouldn't really come working out. You have to
see a thing like that to understand how wonderful it is. You couldn't
see why they washed the bedding, and took the feathers from the pillows
and steamed them in mosquito netting bags and dried them in the shade,
when Sally's was to be a morning wedding, but they did. I even had to
take a bucket and gather from around the walls all the little heaps of
rocks and shells that Uncle Abraham had sent mother from California,
take them out and wash and wipe them, and stack them back, with the
fanciest ones on top. He sent her a ring made of gold he dug himself.
She always kept the ring in a bottle in her bureau, and she meant to
wear it at the wedding, with her new silk dress. I had a new dress
too. I don't know how they got everything done. All of them worked,
until the last few days they were perfect cross patches.

When they couldn't find another thing indoors to scour, they began on
the yard, orchard, barn and road. Mother even had Leon stack the wood
pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made
people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked
that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it. He had to
pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached,
and lay every rail straight in the fences. Father had to take spikes
and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and
the Little Hill, and see that every plank was fast, so none of them
would rattle when important guests drove across. She said she just
simply wouldn't have them in such a condition that Judge Pettis
couldn't hear himself think when he crossed; for you could tell from
his looks that it was very important that none of the things he thought
should be lost. There wasn't a single spot about the place inside or
out that wasn't gone over; and to lots of it you never would have known
anything had been done if you hadn't seen, because the place was always
in proper shape anyway; bu