For a long time they all worked busily. Whenever Almanzo was too cold, he ran and piled more potato tops on the fire. Alice held out her grubby hands to warm them, and the fire shone on her face like sunshine.
“I’m hungry,” Almanzo said.
“So be I,” said Alice. “It must be almost dinner-time.”
Almanzo couldn’t tell by the shadows, because there was no sunshine. Th
ey worked and they worked, and still they did not hear the dinner horn. Almanzo was all hollow inside. He said to Alice:
“Before we get to the end of this row, we’ll hear it.” But they didn’t. Almanzo decided something must have happened to the horn. He said to Father:
“I guess it’s dinner-time.”
John laughed at him, and Father said:
“It’s hardly the middle of the morning, son.”
Almanzo went on picking potatoes. Then Father called, “Put a potato in the ashes, Almanzo. That’ll take the edge off your appetite.”
Almanzo put two big potatoes in the hot ashes, one for him and one for Alice. He piled hot ashes over them, and he piled more potato tops on the fire. He knew he should go back to work, but he stood in the pleasant heat, waiting for the potatoes to bake. He did not feel comfortable in his mind, but he felt warm outside, and he said to himself:
“I have to stay here to roast the potatoes.”
He felt bad because he was letting Alice work all alone, but he thought:
“I’m busy roasting a potato for her.”
Suddenly he heard a soft, hissing puff, and something hit his face. It stuck on his face, scalding hot. He yelled and yelled. The pain was terrible and he could not see.
He heard shouts, and running. Big hands snatched his hands from his face, and Father’s hands tipped back his head. Lazy John was talking French and Alice was crying, “Oh, Father! Oh, Father!”
“Open your eyes, son,” Father said.
Almanzo tried, but he could get only one open. Father’s thumb pushed up the other eyelid, and it hurt. Father said:
“It’s all right. The eye’s not hurt.”
One of the roasting potatoes had exploded, and the scalding-hot inside of it had hit Almanzo. But the eyelid had closed in time. Only the eyelid and his cheek burned.
Father tied his handkerchief over the eye, and he and Lazy John went back to work.
Almanzo hadn’t known that anything could hurt like that burn. But he told Alice that it didn’t hurt—much. He took a stick and dug the other potato out of the ashes.
“I guess it’s your potato,” he snuffled. He was not crying; only tears kept running out of his eyes and down inside his nose.
“No, it’s yours,” Alice said. “It was my potato that exploded.”
“How do you know which it was?” Almanzo asked.
“This one’s yours because you’re hurt, and I’m not hungry, anyway not very hungry,” said Alice.
“You’re as hungry as I be!” Almanzo said. He could not bear to be selfish anymore. “You eat half,” he told Alice, “and I’ll eat half.”
The potato was burned black outside, but the inside was white and mealy and a most delicious baked-potato smell steamed out of it. They let it cool a little, and then they gnawed the inside out of the black crust, and it was the best potato they had ever eaten. They felt better and went back to work.
Almanzo’s face was blistered and his eye was swelled shut. But Mother put a poultice on it at noon, and another at night, and next day it did not hurt so much.
Just after dark on the third day, he and Alice followed the last load of potatoes to the house. The weather was growing colder every minute. Father shoveled the potatoes into the cellar by lantern-light, while Royal and Almanzo did all the chores.