A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [17]
“Could you use some eggs?” Dara Rose asked, in the manner of one asking a favor. “I’ve got plenty put by.”
A flicker of yearning showed in Peg O’Reilly’s care-worn face before she squared her shoulders and raised her chin a notch. “I’d say no, on grounds that I’ve got my pride and I know you’re having a hard time of it, too, but for the young’uns,” she replied. “The last of the oatmeal is used up, and we’re almost out of pinto beans, but a nice fried egg might put some color in Addie’s cheeks and that’s for sure.”
“I’ll send Edrina over with a basket right after she gets home from school,” Dara Rose said.
“You understand that I can’t pay you nothin’,” Peg warned, stiffening her backbone.
“I understand,” Dara Rose confirmed lightly, though every egg her hens laid was precious, since it could be sold for cash money or traded for things she couldn’t raise, like flour. “I’ve got too many, and I don’t want them to go to waste.”
“Mama,” Harriet interjected, “we don’t—”
This time, Dara Rose didn’t hush her daughter out loud, but simply squeezed the child’s hand a little more tightly than she might otherwise have done.
“Obliged, then,” Peg said, and went back to her stirring.
Dara Rose nodded and started off toward home again, poor Harriet scrambling to keep up.
“Mama,” the child insisted, half-breathless, “you already traded away all the eggs, remember? Over at the mercantile? And the hens probably haven’t laid any new ones yet.”
“There are nearly two dozen in the crock on the pantry shelf,” Dara Rose reminded her daughter. Like the potatoes, carrots, turnips and onions she’d squirreled away down in the root cellar, along with a few bushels of apples from the tree in her yard, the eggs suspended in water glass were part of her skimpy reserves, something she and the girls could eat if the hens stopped laying or the hawks got them.
“Yes,” Harriet reasoned, intrepidly logical, “but what if there’s a hard winter and we need to eat them?”
“Harriet,” Dara Rose replied, walking a little faster because it was almost time for Edrina to come home for the midday meal, “there are times when a person simply has to help somebody who needs a hand and hope the good Lord pays heed and makes recompense.” Parting with a few eggs didn’t trouble her nearly as much as the realization that her five-year-old daughter had obviously been worrying about whether or not there would be enough food to get them through.
“What’s ‘recompense’?” Harriet asked.
“Never mind,” Dara Rose answered.
They reached the house, removed their bonnets and their wraps—Dara Rose’s cloak and Harriet’s coat—and Dara Rose ladled warm water out of the stove reservoir for the washing of hands.
In her mind, she heard Peg O’Reilly’s words of brave despair. The last of the oatmeal is used up, and we’re almost out of pinto beans….
Peg earned a pittance taking in laundry as it was, and what little money she earned probably went to pay for starvation rations and to meet the rent on that converted chicken coop of a house they all lived in.
As she reheated the canned venison leftover from last night’s supper, then sliced and thinly buttered the last of the bread she’d made a few days before, Dara Rose silently reminded herself of something Parnell had often told her. “No matter how tough things get,” he used to say, “you won’t have to look far to find somebody else who’d be glad to trade places with you.”
Her children were healthy, unlike Peg’s eldest, and the three of them had a roof over their heads. And Parnell, at least, hadn’t left them willingly, the way Jack O’Reilly had done.
Harriet, her mother’s busy little helper, set three places at the table and then dragged a chair over to the side window so she could stand on the seat and keep a lookout for her sister. Although they had their scuffles and tiffs, like all children, Harriet’s admiration for Edrina knew no bounds.
“There she is!” Harriet shouted gleefully, after a few moments of peering through the glass. “There’s Edrina!”
Dara Rose smiled and began ladling warm venison and broth