had all the nourishment. "There now, the flames are settling into a nice round pattern. I can relax for awhile.", she thought. She lay back and propped her head up against one end of her potato row to enjoy the view.
Lillie understood things. Like the way the stars were arranged in the sky and the shape of the fire. She knew when something was right and when it was wrong. Even Mudie could not match her sewing skills, especially pattern making. All she needed was one close look at the coats and dresses in the shops and she could see just how they must have been cut and pieced together. And for a girl of fourteen years, she could bake the best bread of anyone she knew. There were patterns in all these things, Lillie knew. And there was a certain quality in her that made her see the right in everything, if there was any. If there was wrong in something, she could see that too. People were no different from other things. Lillie knew when they were good and when they were bad without having to be told.
The stars winked at her from under their black velvet blanket. She pulled the sleeves of her thin wool sweater down over her hands and hugged herself. It was too warm for November, but she was suddenly surprised at the chill in the air. She sat up and poked at the campfire to bring up the heat. Amber lights shining from a cluster of houses at the far end of the field were her only reminder that Mudie had things for her to do before bedtime. There was the endless basket of socks to darn and the children to tuck into bed. Lillie was the one they wanted when it came time to say their prayers because she liked to sit patiently and wait for them to remember each line. Hildy, the baby, was only four. Lillie always made her recite her prayers in German because her lisp sounded funnier that way than it did in English. Anyway, that's the way Lillie had learned them and she thought they sounded more proper that way.
Platte Deutch, or low-dutch, as Pa liked to call it, was Oma's language and Mudie spoke it too, better than she spoke English. She and uncle Fernie had come all the way to Wisconsin back in 1875 when Oma brought them on the ship from Germany. Mudie was thirteen at the time and Fernie was two years older. It must have been some trip, Lillie thought, with Oma, and those fifteen kids along with her, trapsing halfway around the world with no husband, and none of them knowing any English. But they managed to get along. Most of the workers at the Trimbourn Farm where they found jobs had come from Germany too, and many of them spoke low-dutch, so that helped. Lillie knew low-dutch better than the high German that Pastor Bergman spoke in church, although she could keep up well enough, and she could read the little German bible that Oma had given her on her confirmation day.
As the fire began to warm her, she thought how much she relished the little time that she had to herself in the evenings when everyone was busy amusing themselves with one thing or another. Right about now, Litz would be showing Fernie how to fold paper just the right way so it would form the shape of a dog or a cow, or some other animal. Freida would have stopped over to ask Mudie for help making clothes for the new baby. Bill would be entertaining his friends down at the beer parlor and Collie would be with him, admiring everything he said. Anna was the only one that worried Lillie. She was the closest to Lillie's age and missed her more than the others when she would go off like this. Anna was moody and sullen more often than not. She was probably by herself somewhere, writing sentimental verses in that old cloth covered journal she carried around with her everywhere she went. Or, maybe she was reading a novel about a pioneer woman who lost all her children in an indian raid. Anna was like Pa that way. They could talk for hours about what might have been or would have been, if only things had been this way or that way.
