“I think people say that, because it looks like a green cheese,” she said. “But appearances are deceiving.” Then while she wiped all the green cheeses and rubbed them with butter, she told them about the dead, cold moon that is like a little world on which nothing grows.
The first day Ma made cheese, Laura tasted the whey. She tasted it without saying anything to Ma, and when Ma turned around and saw her face, Ma laughed. That night while she was washing the supper dishes and Mary and Laura were wiping them, Ma told Pa that Laura had tasted the whey and didn’t like it.
“You wouldn’t starve to death on Ma’s whey, like old Grimes did on his wife’s,” Pa said.
Laura begged him to tell her about Old Grimes. So, though Pa was tired, he took his fiddle out of its box and played and sang for Laura:
“Old Grimes is dead, that good old man,
We ne’er shall see him more,
He used to wear an old gray coat,
All buttoned down before.
“Old Grimeses’ wife made skim-milk cheese,
Old Grimes, he drank the whey,
There came an east wind from the west,
And blew Old Grimes away.”
“There you have it!” said Pa. “She was a mean, tight-fisted woman. If she hadn’t skimmed all the milk, a little cream would have run off in the whey, and Old Grimes might have staggered along.
“But she skimmed off every bit of cream, and poor Old Grimes got so thin the wind blew him away. Plumb starved to death.”
Then Pa looked at Ma and said, “Nobody’d starve to death when you were around, Caroline.”
“Well, no,” Ma said. “No, Charles, not if you were there to provide for us.”
Pa was pleased. It was all so pleasant, the doors and windows wide open to the summer evening, the dishes making little cheerful sounds together as Ma washed them and Mary and Laura wiped, and Pa putting away the fiddle and smiling and whistling softly to himself.
After awhile he said, “I’m going over to Henry’s tomorrow morning, Caroline, to borrow his grubbing hoe. Those sprouts are getting waist-high around the stumps in the wheat-field. A man just has to keep everlasting at it, or the woods’ll take back the place.”
Early next morning he started to walk to Uncle Henry’s. But before long he came hurrying back, hitc
hed the horses to the wagon, threw in his ax, the two washtubs, the washboiler and all the pails and wooden buckets there were.
“I don’t know if I’ll need em all, Caroline,” he said, “but I’d hate to want em and not have em.”
“Oh, what is it? What is it?” Laura asked, jumping up and down with excitement.
“Pa’s found a bee tree,” Ma said. “Maybe he’ll bring us some honey.”
It was noon before Pa came driving home. Laura had been watching for him, and she ran out to the wagon as soon as it stopped by the barnyard. But she could not see into it.
Pa called, “Caroline, if you’ll come take this pail of honey, I’ll go unhitch.”
Ma came out to the wagon, disappointed. She said:
“Well, Charles, even a pail of honey is something.” Then she looked into the wagon and threw up her hands. Pa laughed.
All the pails and buckets were heaping full of dripping, golden honeycomb. Both tubs were piled full, and so was the wash-boiler.
Pa and Ma went back and forth, carrying the two loaded tubs and the wash-boiler and all the buckets and pails into the house. Ma heaped a plate high with the golden pieces, and covered all the rest neatly with cloths.
For dinner they all had as much of the delicious honey as they could eat, and Pa told them how he found the bee tree.