was harder?' She had heard talk of immortal life from the
gospel sharps, she said, but she could not reckon that what she
was doin' was a likely preparation for her immortality.

"But she still had her dreams, though more rarely. She had read
a few books--what, it is pretty hard to imagine, Seaside
Library novels most likely; yet they had been food for fancy.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'when I was that dizzy from the heat of
the cooking that if I didn't take a breath of fresh air I'd
faint, I'd stick my head out of the kitchen window, and close
my eyes and see most wonderful things. All of a sudden I'd be
traveling down a country road, and everything clean and quiet,
no dust, no dirt; just streams ripplin' down sweet meadows, and
lambs playing, breezes blowing the breath of flowers, and soft
sunshine over everything; and lovely cows lazying knee-deep in
quiet pools, and young girls bathing in a curve of stream all
white and slim and natural--and I'd know I was in Arcady. I'd
read about that country once, in a book. And maybe knights, all
flashing in the sun, would come riding around a bend in the
road, or a lady on a milk-white mare, and in the distance I
could see the towers of a castle rising, or I just knew, on the
next turn, that I'd come upon some palace, all white and airy
and fairy-like, with fountains playing, and flowers all over
everything, and peacocks on the lawn..... and then I'd open my
eyes, and the heat of the cooking range would strike on me, and
I'd hear Jake sayin'--he was my husband--I'd hear Jake sayin',
"Why ain't you served them beans? Think I can wait here all
day!" Romance!--I reckon the nearest I ever come to it was when
a drunken Armenian cook got the snakes and tried to cut my
throat with a potato knife and I got my arm burned on the stove