Firefly Read Free Page B

With a slice of meat and a dish of applesauce, the meal looked spare but sufficient, though Julie couldn't help glancing to the green beans steaming on Hans' full plate.  She licked her lips despite her efforts at control.
    She did not have to exert the slightest effort, however, to avoid looking at Hans Wallenmund.  Without looking up from her plate, she could still see his smoothly handsome features, the broad, strong nose, the wide blue eyes, the square jaw, the blond hair from which a boyish forelock tumbled.  He wore a clean but unpressed chambray shirt buttoned to his Adam's apple, with black suspenders supporting his slightly faded denim trousers.  Hans dressed the same every Sunday when he came to Plato from his farm for dinner with the Hollstroms.
    "I bought six more Holsteins this week," he informed his hosts.  "No more little Jerseys."
    He said it as if he were spitting out a piece of unchewable gristle.
    "I get twice as much milk from a Holstein, and they don't have problems calving the way Jerseys do.  The four I bought last year all dropped their calves with no help, but I had to pull three calves from my seven Jerseys.  Even so, I lost two calves and one cow."
    "Such a loss!" Katharine exclaimed.
    "With the Holsteins I can make up for it very quickly," Hans boasted, and he reached without asking for another slice of pork, his third.  "Already every month I am making two hundred pounds more schmierkase ."
    At that point Julie stopped listening to the conversation. There was no excuse for this repeated bragging of the wealth and success of Hans Wallenmund.  His farm, his crops, his livestock, his cheese, his barn, his house, even his new wagon had been verbally inventoried and spread out before her over the past three Sunday dinners.  None of it appealed to her in the least, especially the thousands and thousands of pounds of cottage cheese.
    Hans didn't appeal to her either.  He was handsome enough, and he had money, though here in Plato there wasn't much to spend it on.  His manners weren't the best, but Julie had seen worse.  Lucas Carter, for instance, with his perpetual chaw.  Or that drunken lout Del Morgan and his foul tongue.
    She couldn't blame Hans for his lack of education, which was one of the points that irritated her.  Few of the farmers she had known in Indiana or the other places the Hollstroms had lived had been able to do much more than read and write their own names.  Hans at least could print a legible letter and he knew enough arithmetic to avoid being cheated when he sold his precious cheese or bought another cow.  But Katharine Hollstrom had raised Julie with a love for literature and history, and Julie doubted Hans would be the kind of husband with whom she could share those interests.
    Not that she expected to find such a man out in the wilderness of the Arizona Territory any more than in the frozen wastes of Minnesota or the wide golden wheat fields of Kansas.
    Hans pushed himself away from the table with a loud belch, interrupting Julie's musings.
    Katharine smiled indulgently and said, "I do believe we're ready for dessert, dear."
    Julie stared at her half-eaten meal.  The potatoes were cold, the gravy congealed greasily.  She had barely touched her applesauce.  The biscuit, however, was quite gone.  She expected a lecture from her father on this waste of good food, but Wilhelm remained silent while she gathered the plates and took them to the kitchen.
    The pie on the windowsill fairly glowed in the narrow band of sunlight.  From the golden crust oozed lush red strawberry sauce, almost candied in the oven.  Strawberries were Hans' favorite, and he had complimented her profusely last week for the unsurpassed deliciousness of her pie.  She had made this only at Katharine's insistence.  The effort of preparing dinner was more than enough, and Julie could easily have done without the added work of baking a pie.  Now she felt reluctant to share the splendid work of