Mr. Jensen, the Danish laundryman, used to
bring a chair from his porch and sit out in the grass plot. Some ragged
little boys from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under a white
umbrella at the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsters who came to
dance. That vacant lot soon became the most cheerful place in town. Even
on the hottest afternoons the cottonwoods made a rustling shade, and the
air smelled of popcorn and melted butter, and Bouncing Bets wilting in the
sun. Those hardy flowers had run away from the laundryman's garden, and
the grass in the middle of the lot was pink with them.
The Vannis kept exemplary order, and closed every evening at the hour
suggested by the city council. When Mrs. Vanni gave the signal, and the
harp struck up `Home, Sweet Home,' all Black Hawk knew it was ten o'clock.
You could set your watch by that tune as confidently as by the roundhouse
whistle.
At last there was something to do in those long, empty summer evenings,
when the married people sat like images on their front porches, and the
boys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks--northward to the
edge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back again to the
post-office, the ice-cream parlour, the butcher shop. Now there was a
place where the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one could
laugh aloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence.
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