Lena often said she hoped I would be a travelling man
when I grew up. They had a gay life of it; nothing to do but ride about on
trains all day and go to theatres when they were in big cities. Behind the
hotel there was an old store building, where the salesmen opened their big
trunks and spread out their samples on the counters. The Black Hawk
merchants went to look at these things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas,
though she was I retail trade,' was permitted to see them and to `get
ideas.' They were all generous, these travelling men; they gave Tiny
Soderball handkerchiefs and gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and
so many bottles of perfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed some
of them on Lena.
One afternoon in the week before Christmas, I came upon Lena and her funny,
square-headed little brother Chris, standing before the drugstore, gazing
in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah's Arks arranged in the frosty show
window. The boy had come to town with a neighbour to do his Christmas
shopping, for he had money of his own this year. He was only twelve, but
that winter he had got the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and
making the fire in it every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been,
too!
We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all his
presents and showed them to me something for each of the six younger than
himself, even a rubber pig for the baby.
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