Read Online A Bride for Donnigan by Janette Oke - Free Book Online Page A

big room into two smaller ones. The smaller room at the east end became a bedroom with some privacy and the larger room was the living-kitchen space. Donnigan felt proud of himself for thinking of the idea. He even cut another window into the east end so that the bedroom would have a window all its own.
    It was hard getting the job done. Donnigan was back at the harvest again with the weather cooperating quite nicely. His evenings, when he would have wished to put his feet up and rest his back a bit, were spent instead working on the changes to the house.
    But even when he got the jobs completed, he still felt uneasy. The house still looked like just what it was: a bachelor’s quarters. Donnigan finally gave up. When it came to frills and gingham, he was out of his element.
    He did take a look at the yard. He had thought that he kept it fairly neat. Now he could see that what he thought of as neatness might also be seen as clutter. He went to work moving the woodpile a ways from the door, stacking it neatly in a long row against the back fence. He filled in a few holes that had been made by the sows when they had escaped their pens one day while Donnigan had worked the fields. He even thought of constructing a fence, but there wasn’t time for that.
    “It needs—it needs something,” he admitted as he stood back and squinted to get a full look at the house and yard before him.
    He wasn’t sure what was missing, but he felt the picture he was getting was rather bleak and dull and desolate. He tried to go back in his mind to other houses he had seen in his younger years. His memory brought forth white picket fences and rose bushes in full bloom.
    “Can’t fix that,” he said to himself, but, still dissatisfied, he shifted about to look at the house again.
    At last he went to a shed and withdrew a spade. All along the path to the house and the wall by the door, he turned up the fresh soil and shook the grass roots from the dirt.
    When he had finished his spading, he headed for the meadow behind the house. He had noticed many varieties of wild flowers there and considered some of them to be quite pretty.
    He was disappointed to find that many of the prettier ones had finished their blooming season, but he went to work on what he found.
    The transplanting was not easy. He had to trek back and forth, back and forth, one small plant after another held on the shovel surface so that its roots would not lose the dirt around them until it reached its new abode.
    He was almost done with his task, gently patting another small plant in place while the sweat traced streaks down his dusty face, when a voice spoke directly behind him. Donnigan had heard no one approach and the voice startled him and brought him upright on his knees.
    It was Lucas who stood beside him. Donnigan felt the color rise in his tanned cheeks. He opened his mouth to explain what he was doing, then closed it again. Lucas would have to be a fool not to see for himself.
    Donnigan rose slowly to his full height and swatted the dust from his knees with the pair of work gloves he retrieved from the ground.
    “Howdy, Lucas,” he said, hoping that his voice held more warmth than he presently felt. “Didn’t hear you arrive.”
    “You were busy,” observed Lucas, and Donnigan wondered if he saw a glint of amusement in the other man’s eyes.
    “Thought the place looked rather bare,” Donnigan offered in embarrassed excuse. “Don’t want her shocked by the drabness of it all.”
    Lucas made no reply to Donnigan’s remark. He was carefully studying one of the small plants that Donnigan had just placed along the walk. “Where’d you get that one?” he asked simply.
    “Down by the crick,” replied Donnigan, rather pleased that he had found such a pretty little cluster of flowers.
    “What is it?” asked Lucas, bending down to get a closer look.
    “I don’t know—but it was blooming and I thought it—that a woman might think it rather