she hated in her daughter-in-law above everything else was the way
in which Clara could come it over people. It enraged her that the
affairs of her son's big, barnlike house went on as well as they
did, and she used to feel that in this world we have to wait
overlong to see the guilty punished. "Suppose Johanna Vavrika died
or got sick?" the old lady used to say to Olaf. "Your wife
wouldn't know where to look for her own dish-cloth." Olaf
only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did
not die, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was
looking poorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house,
and she slept in a little room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by
night or day, could come prying about there to find fault without
her knowing it. Her one weakness was that she was an incurable
talker, and she sometimes made trouble without meaning to.

This morning Clara was tying a wine-coloured ribbon about
her throat when Johanna appeared with her coffee. After putting
the tray on a sewing table, she began to make Clara's bed,
chattering the while in Bohemian.

"Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I'm
going down presently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He
asked for prune preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out
of them, and to bring some prunes and honey and cloves from
town."

Clara poured her coffee. "Ugh! I don't see how men can eat
so much sweet stuff. In the morning, too!"

Her aunt chuckled knowingly. "Bait a bear with honey, as we