Later in the week, Mr. and Mrs. Bowman came to the farm. A Thursday night meeting was planned in the home and the word was sent around the neighborhood. To Ellen and Mary Jane’s delight, their new friend Linda was with the Bowmans. Best of all she had permission to stay the remaining part of the week and the the next also.
No one really felt much hope that Joe French would come to the meeting – except maybe Mamma. Whatever glimmerings of hope anyone had were dashed away with an oath from him when he was invited. Mrs. French came, and with her, Jeanne and Balzar.
“There’s a real work going on in my Balzar, Eva. He’ll soon be in, I think,” Mrs. French confided happily.
He was too. And although he did not live for many years afterward, dear Balzar showed real evidence of divine life. Jeanne was a little wishy-washy.
Mamma rejoiced greatly with her beloved Helen. “Now maybe they will encourage each other and make the stand in baptism,” she thought.
Although Mary Jane and Ellen enjoyed the meeting, Linda seemed relieved when it was over. She wanted to take a walk in the moonlight down to the pond. The children slipped out unnoticed. Holding hands, the three skipped all the way – happy and invigorated by the gentle, cool, night breezes, faintly fragrant with the scents of sage brush and the good old earth. They sat down in the sand of a dry ravine and listened to the frogs croaking in the pond and the wild rhapsody of trillions of crickets. The whirring wings of a night hawk startled them for a second. Linda’s dark eyes sparkled.
“Who has a really juicy blood-curdling ghost story to tell? Or a hair-raising murder?” she asked.
“Not me,” Ellen shuddered, looking over her shoulder.
“Chicken!” taunted Linda. “Mary Jane?”
“Aw, we’d get too spooked up to sleep tonight. Anyway – hey! Let’s take off our shoes. The sand is still a little warm. It feels so good to wriggle your toes in it. My Sunday shoes kinda pinch my feet anyway. Lean back and look up at the stars. What a glorious sky!”
Mary Jane lay back against the lush grass on the bank. Reaching for a long stem of grass to chew, she inadvertently pulled up a tender little plant.
“Lamb’s quarters!” she cried. Then speaking softly and almost tenderly to the little plant she crooned, “You dear little old weed! God gave you to us in the drought time to help feed us and I love you!”
“What on earth is that old weed you’re mooning over! What a nut you are, Mary Jane! Give me that thing!” And Linda rudely grabbed it away. A bruised little lamb’s quarters plant fell at Ellen’s feet.
“Don’t do that!” Ellen blurted out crossly. Then “Oh, Linda, I’m sorry. I guess you don’t understand what it means to us. You see, we had a bad drought a while back and, well – really, about all we had to eat was potatoes and beans and salt pork and bread. Mamma knew about this little weed that you can cook like spinach or fix in a salad. We sorta felt like it was – from the Lord – and that’s why –.” Ellen hesitated. Linda was laughing.
“You’re sure a weird pair! A fig for your old weeds! I hope we don’t have stewed weeds tomorrow.”
Somehow the fun was over. Mary Jane and Ellen felt crushed, like the wee plant. Linda sensed her mistake, and after an awkward silence, pouted.
“I thought we could really have some fun out here, but if you’re going to be like that, we might as well go home to bed.”
They walked almost in silence to the house. Upstairs in their room, Mary Jane observed to Ellen before Linda returned from getting a drink of water, “I thought it would really be great to have a Christian friend, but there’s still no one like my dear good, wonderful sisters!”
“That a real mouthful! But we must be nicer and try to keep her happy.”
Since Ellen insisted, Mary Jane and Linda shared the bed, while she slept on the floor. Soon snugly settled under the covers, Linda began: “Let’s talk. Kid, who do you think I’ll marry when I get older – I mean, what kind of a guy?”
“Well, – a-a-Christian, I hope!” was the answer. “Uh, oh well, sure – but I mean, do you think he’ll be handsome?”
Mary Jane thought in the darkness of the brown curls and sparkling brown eyes on the pillow beside her and answered, “Oh, definitely! But that’s a long way off. Why worry about that now!”
“You old kill-joy! Aren’t you even concerned about who you’re going to marry?”
“Yes, but – anyway, I don’t know anybody to worry about.” A huge yawn escaped.
“Don’t you have a spark of romance in you? How dull can you kids be?”
“Oh, Linda, I used to feed on one romance after another. In fact I just about read the whole library. But I quit it. There was no food for my soul, and well – it was Jennie who helped me to stop it. I’m so much happier and better off now that I don’t read all that trash – I mean the worldly stuff. I didn’t have any Christian books.”
“You’re so goody-goody you make me mad! What can we do around here anyway?”
“Jennie has some nice things planned. You’ll see; we’ll have fun – first a picnic to Freemont’s Fort, a cook-out at the Paint Mines. We’ll go choke-cherry picking too and – –.”
“Okay. Maybe it won’t be so bad.”
“Linda, I hope you don’t think we’re trying to act ‘holier than thou’? We know so few young people and there just aren’t any boys in our meeting here that we can get acquainted with. There’s not much to talk about.”
“What about Roderick? He’s terribly handsome.”
“But he never comes to meeting and isn’t really good company – spiritually. You go to school with him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t have a good reputation, even at school. But I wish he’d look my way –.”
“You’d better wish he doesn’t. His dad did say that Rod told him us girls were the ‘salt of the earth.’ But he prefers other seasoning, I guess. Funny! His dad wants him to go with a Christian girl, but he himself won’t even come to meeting. He’s maybe agnostic. I feel sorry for his wife. It just shows how an unequal yoke can work, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” And Linda yawned. So the girls said goodnight and were soon asleep.