Prairie Rose by Catherine Palmer

Fortunately, Mrs. Jameson had permitted the fairy-tale book a place with the copies of the Bible, The Pilgrim’s Progress , Dante’s Divine Comedy , and Milton’s Paradise Lost . What Rosie wouldn’t have given for a Sir Lancelot. Or even a Frog Prince.
    Instead, she spent the morning putting the rest of the stove back together and searching for kindling along the creek bank. When she discovered an old willow tree about a mile downstream, she asked Seth to cut some branches for her so she could weave seats for the chairs. Chipper followed her everywhere, but Rosie made a point to give kind yet brief responses to his thousand questions.
    After lunch, Seth sent Chipper off with a burlap bag to gather dried buffalo and cow chips for the fire. Rosie didn’t like the idea of the little boy wandering alone across the burning prairie, but she kept her mouth shut. What did she know about being a parent, she reminded herself. Seth continued his plowing, even through the worst of the heat. And Rosie made up her mind to work just as hard as father and son.
    She took down the tattered window paper and tacked up the gauzy cheesecloth in which her skillet had been wrapped. This screen let in scant light, but it kept the flies and mosquitoes outside where they belonged. Then she fashioned a broom by shaving a sapling into fine splints and binding it with a rawhide thong. She swept the pounded dirt floor of wood chips, food scraps, and other evidences of bachelor habitation. Small piles of rodent droppings made her wish that the household included a cat.
    By dinnertime, Rosie had cleaned the chimneys on all the lamps and nailed up shelves for the pots and pans. Then she had cooked a big supper of corn bread and stew. Chunks of squirrel meat swam with potatoes, wild onions, and beans in a rich broth that made even little, sunburned Chipper perk up.
    When Seth walked into the soddy and spotted the table with its steaming cauldron, golden brown corn bread, and bouquet of wildflowers, his blue eyes lit up like a summer afternoon. “Miss Mills,” he said as he sat down, “I’m beginning to believe I made a wise choice in bringing you out here. You’re as fine a cook as any I’ve known.”
    Rosie flushed as though he had called her Helen of Troy. Her hands shook as she poured fresh milk into his mug. No one had ever said Rosie was fine at anything. She knew she was a good cook by the way everybody at the Home ate and ate—and then asked for seconds. She knew her cherry pies were delicious because she had tasted them herself. But “as fine a cook as any I’ve known” was the biggest compliment she’d ever received. It was even better than Rolf Rustemeyer calling her beautiful. After all, any number of women could be called beautiful. But to be the finest cook a man had ever known …
    “There’s a gooseberry bush upstream aways,” Seth said. “We’ll have pawpaws and chokeberries, too.”
    “I do make good pies,” Rosie said and quickly realized how vain her words sounded. “What I mean to say is—”
    “I’m sure you do. I’ll look forward to tasting them.” He glanced at his son. “And, Chipper, at this house you can eat all the pie you want.”
    The little boy’s blue eyes darted up in surprise. “Really? Really, truly?”
    Rosie could hardly believe her ears as she sat down across from the little boy who had been too astounded to glower and label his father a Yankee. Seth nodded, and one corner of his mouth turned up in the hint of an actual smile.
    “And now,” he said, “shall we bless the food?”

    The shout that echoed from the barn many days later sent Seth’s heart straight into his throat. He dropped his seed planter in the furrow and took off running. Chipper jumped up and spilled a bowl of potato peelings on the ground as he raced after his father. Seth had just hurtled the low fence that ran around the barn when he heard the cry again.
    “Oh my! Oh my!”
    “Rosie?” Forgetting her formal name,