Crimson Snow Read Free Page B

cloak, but it was the only warm one she had, and the day was still bitter cold. The weather had been bad for nearly a month. Just after Christmas an iron frost had gripped South Bend, to the despair of farmers whose livestock were in danger of freezing to death. “At least it’s too cold to snow,” said the weather-wise, but they were wrong. It had snowed, and snowed again, and thawed a little, and snowed still more, so that now the streets were uneven with packed snow and ice, rutted by carriage wheels and pockmarked by the hooves of horses. The sidewalks were just as bad, making one’s footing uncertain at best.
    Hilda walked down all the steps again, but before she left by the back door, she found her storm rubbers in the boot box and put them on, sighing a little. Decidedly it was not easy to look smart when going out in South Bend, Indiana, in the winter. Her scarf and gloves, pulled out of a cloak pocket, were of thick wool, knitted by her mother. They were not beautiful, but they were warm.
    Hilda was not fond of these garments, but she was a Swede. Swedes learn early to be practical about winter dress.
    She wasn’t meeting Patrick Cavanaugh today, which was unusual. A veteran fireman, he could usually choose the shifts he wanted to work, and he always tried to be free on Hilda’s afternoon off. This week, though, several men were ill with the respiratory ailments brought on by fighting fires in desperately cold weather, so the healthy members of the fire brigade were working double shifts.
    Hilda had decided to do a little shopping of the kind she could certainly not do with Patrick at her side. She needed a new corset and had decided also to indulge herself with a readymade petticoat. She hated fine sewing, or any kind of sewing for that matter, and she wanted a pretty petticoat with several flounces to give her skirts the proper shape (and show a little when she walked). Even the cheapest kind would cost over a dollar, and she felt guilty about spending so much on herself, but Mama and the younger children didn’t need her help so much nowadays, and she had the money.
    Her shopping took some time. Ellsworth’s Department Store had everything she wanted, but fitting a corset was a fussy business, which Hilda’s impatience didn’t make any easier. Once that purchase was made, she looked at nearly every petticoat in the store before choosing one that suited her. Her next purchase was some fine white wool to knit into a warm corset cover. She wouldn’t do the knitting, of course. Mama was a very good knitter who thought it her plain duty to keep all her children in warm garments. Hilda decided to buy a lace-trimmed handkerchief as a present for Mama. She would think it a wicked extravagance, but Hilda knew she would treasure it even though the lace was machine-made.
    Finally, her shopping completed and her parcels ready to be sent home, she stopped at the candy counter and bought a penny’s worth of sourballs for Erik. Then she made her way—cautiously on the slippery sidewalk—to the central firehouse, where Erik should now be working at his job as stable boy. With any luck Patrick would be there, too, and they might be able to talk a little.
    The newsboys were on the streets crying the early editions of the South Bend Tribune and the South Bend Times. Hilda had just two cents left in her purse, the cost of the newspaper. Mr. Williams forbade Hilda to read the newspaper, and though she did so anyway, at Tippecanoe Place she had to be stealthy about it. It was often the next day or even two days later before she could pull one out of the trash and sneak it up to her room. By that time the news was new no longer. She was torn now. Should she spend the very last of her money on something she could read soon anyway?
    Thrift was her watchword, always. It had to be. Even though she had few expenses, living at her place of employment, she tried to save every penny she