Read Online Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas - Free Book Online

the door, letting in the sunlight and the fresh air, the sound of the dredge—and a lazy winter fly that buzzed around the room. The winter had been hard on all God’s creatures, and Hennie didn’t have the heart to swatthe insect, although she would be ruthless with his brethren come summer. The fly flew back out the door.
    “This is as nice a place as I ever saw,” Nit said after a while.
    “I’m lucky in my choice of a home, that’s for sure.”
    Nit stopped stitching, her hand over the quilt, thinking. Then she asked, “How was it you came here, to this house? I’d like to know that. How was it, Mrs. Comfort?”
    The question brought a warm feeling to Hennie. “My husband built it for me. I said I wanted a house tight enough to keep out the wind in winter, with room for my quilt frame, a bedroom upstairs with a window that opened so that there would be nothing between me and the stars, and front windows big enough so my geraniums could sun theirself all year long. And that’s just what I got. From the day I set foot inside, I never wanted to live anyplace else. In God’s own time, I expect I’ll die here.”
    She said that last bit before she thought,
No, God’s time has passed
, and she would die elsewhere. But Hennie didn’t correct herself for she’d told no one yet of her decision to leave Middle Swan. She wasn’t ready to hear her friends cluck over her good fortune in having a daughter with a mansion who wanted her mother to live with her. Nor did she want folks knocking on the door, asking could they rent the old place from her, maybe buy it. Jake had built the house for her, and Hennie couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else living in the place she loved so.
    “It’s been a happy house then?”
    Hennie considered the question. The house had seen its sorrows, but like Hennie herself, it had endured. And it hadlet her survive the long winters when the snow drifted above the windowsills and the sun was too weak to come more than a foot through the window glass. During that time, the cold never left her old fingers and toes, and the blue devils came, enough to nearly drive her out of her mind. But then she would go to quilting, cutting and stitching the pieces together like a crazy woman to fight off the dark memories, the murder of her baby and the loss of others not yet fully made, as well as the deaths of old friends, the men mutilated in mine accidents, the women dead in childbirth. A mining camp was a cruel place, Hennie thought, for she had seen the way the mountains took their revenge on those bold enough to tear up the land.
    The bright scraps of color that Hennie’s fingers fit into patterns never failed to cheer her, lifting her spirits, letting her know that spring would begin and then the precious summer. Summers and quilting, they were gifts from God. There had been grievements and back-sets, but yes, she said, “I’ve been happy in this house—more often than not.”
    The girl took two stitches, using her thimble to push the needle back and forth through the fabric sandwich of quilt top, batting, and back. “What’ve you got here for your batten?” she asked.
    Cotton batts, ordered out of the monkey book, Hennie told her.
    “Cotton. That’s like quilting through butter.” Nit sighed with pleasure. “At home, we used old quilts or wore-out dresses, sometimes overalls. My, but you can’t get your needle through overalls,” she said. Sometimes she gathered milkweed for filler, and once, oilcloth. Of course, those fillingswere for plain quilts. With her quilts for good, Nit picked the cotton herself, dug out the seeds, combed it, and laid it on. “Cotton makes a good soft quilt. Warmth was mostly what I cared about. We had to use three or nine quilts on top of us to keep warm in that dogtrot I was raised up in. You remember dogtrots, don’t you?” She lifted her eyes to the old woman, who nodded. Two rooms, one on each side of a hall that was open to the outside at both