I prefer to be
foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.'
`But you'll be lonesome. You'll get tired of this sort of life, and you'll
want a family.'
`Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to work for Mrs. Thomas I was
nineteen years old, and I had never slept a night in my life when there
weren't three in the bed. I never had a minute to myself except when I was
off with the cattle.'
Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, she
dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical. But tonight
her mind seemed to dwell on those early years. She told me she couldn't
remember a time when she was so little that she wasn't lugging a heavy baby
about, helping to wash for babies, trying to keep their little chapped
hands and faces clean. She remembered home as a place where there were
always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick
woman.
`It wasn't mother's fault. She would have made us comfortable if she
could. But that was no life for a girl! After I began to herd and milk, I
could never get the smell of the cattle off me. The few underclothes I had
I kept in a cracker-box. On Saturday nights, after everybody was in bed,
then I could take a bath if I wasn't too tired.
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