The Girls of Silver Spur Ranch — Context and Discussion

usin Hannah declared, spoiled her, yet could not help feeling that she was, mentally and physically superior to them, "made of finer clay," she would have put it. People often remarked on this lack of resemblance to the others, and when they did so in Mrs. Spooner’s presence she always hastily changed the subject. Elizabeth had often wondered why. Somehow there seemed always to have been a mystery surrounding her--something that, if explained, would prove very thrilling indeed.

Occupied with these thoughts, she moved from cupboard to table, and from table to fire, preparing the evening meal with deft skill, for anything Elizabeth Spooner did she did a little better than other people.

Outside the window stretched a vast brown-green plain, bounded by a horizon line like a ring. There was monotony in the prospect, and yet a curious sense of adventure and romance, as there is about the sea. Elizabeth delighted in the mystic beauty of the prairie, yet to-day her fine eyes studied the level unseeingly as she glanced through the window, looking to see if Jonah Bean was in sight; the glories of sunset that flooded the plain passed almost unnoticed. She was thinking too earnestly on her own problem to observe the outside world.

"If I were by chance adopted, I certainly have a right to know who I am," Elizabeth pondered, as she set the table beautifully, with certain artistic touches that the clumsier hands of the other girls somehow could never manage. "It won’t make any difference in my feelings for father and mother and the girls if I should happen to be born in a higher station of life than theirs--though I can easily see how poor mother could think it might; I trust I’m above being snobbish--" Elizabeth’s eyes began to glow with a resolute purpose--"I’m going to find out, that’s what! I’ll make Cousin Hannah tell me. She’s so big it’s awful to sleep with her, and she snores like thunder. Mary knows how bad it is, and how I hate it, that’s the reason she made me sleep with Ruth, when one of us had to give up our place. To-night I’ll make Mary take the Babe’s place with Mother, who might need her in the night, and I’ll sleep with Cousin Hannah--and find out what she knows about me!"

Jonah Bean came stamping up the steps just then to wash up for supper at the water-shelf just outside the kitchen door; informing anybody who chose to listen that he was mighty tired--there was two men’s work to do on the Spooner ranch, anyhow, and he was gittin’ old, same’s other folks. Glancing in at the open door he observed who was the cook.

"Humph! So it’s your night for gittin’ supper? Well, I hope the truck’ll taste as fancy as that air table looks."

"Sure, Jonah," answered Elizabeth, critically observing the effect of her handiwork. "If you’ll just step outside and get me a big bunch of those yellow cactus-blooms to put in this brown pitcher it’ll be perfect, and I’ll see that you get a big painted cup full of coffee."

"Never could see no use in weeds--full o’ stickers at that," grumbled Jonah, as he turned to go out for the flowers that were growing on the great cactus in the fence corner. "Hope that air coffee’ll be strong and hot, though."

The coffee was strong and hot, and the hominy was white and well-cooked; the bacon was brown and crisp and the biscuits light as feathers. Elizabeth dished the supper in the flowered dishes kept for company, because she could not bear the heavy earthenware they used every day. She filled the squatty brown pitcher with the big bunch of golden blooms old Jonah bore gingerly, careful of the thorns, and then lighted the lamp with the red shade. Really they didn’t need a lamp, but the glow from the red shade was so pretty that she lighted it anyway--she so loved beautiful things.

She arranged her mother’s tray daintily, laying a cactus-bloom, freed of its thorns, beside the plate--somehow she felt as if she was preparing for some extra occasion.

"I declare Libby always cooks like she was fixin’ for company," said Cousin Hannah, admiringly, as she sat at the gracefully arranged table. "Oughter keep boarders, and she wouldn’t find no time for extra kinks."

Elizabeth shuddered a little as she poured Jonah’s coffee in the biggest cup, with the painted motto on it--how she would hate to do such a sordid thing as keep boarders!