Under the Distant Sky Read Online Free

there?”
    “Yes, finally. The little one insists on giving her biggest brother a hard time about riding to Lula Mae Springer’s house. Chris takes all he can stomach, then lashes back. I told him to just let it go in one ear and out the other, but he’s not always willing to do that.”
    Hannah nodded. “And I’ve told Patty Ruth not to tease him about Lula Mae. But she couldn’t resist it today.”
    “So is that what all the fuss was about?”
    “Yes. But I cured it, at least for a while.”
    “You made them kiss each other?”
    “Mm-hmm.” Hannah chuckled. “What is it with brothers and sisters, anyway? I’ve never been able to figure out what’s so awful about having to kiss your brother…or the other way around.”
    “Maybe that’s because you were an only child, and never had a brother.”
    “I suppose. But you never had a sister, so you probably don’t understand the brother-sister feud any better than I do. I know you and Daniel fought, because I’ve heard you two laugh about it.”
    Solomon paused a moment, then leaned down and placed his hands on the arms of her chair “You know what?”
    “What?”
    “I didn’t have a sister to have to kiss when we fought, but if Pa was here tonight and told me I had to kiss the most beautiful woman in the world if I started a fuss with her, I’d start the fuss just so I could kiss her.”
    Hannah smiled and met his tender gaze with one of her own. “How about since Pa’s not here, we skip the fuss and just kiss?”
    “I was hoping you’d say that.”
    They kissed tenderly, then Solomon turned up the flame of the lantern by his chair and picked up the novel he had been reading the night before—
Great Expectations.
    All was silent in the house as Solomon read and Hannah sewed. When the grandfather clock struck the half-hour, Solomon chuckled.
    Hannah looked up. “I didn’t know you were reading a comedy.”
    “Oh, I’m not. It’s just that this is so different from anything else Dickens has written. I see Dickens himself in the hero, Pip.It’s as if he’s letting us look into his own mind while we explore Pip’s mind, as he cries out against the brutal hardships he suffered as a young boy.”
    “I suppose that’s what novelists often do,” Hannah said. “Show us themselves in their characters. And when the novelist is as good as Charles Dickens, he can actually help his readers by sharing his own trials and defeats.”
    Solomon’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Maybe some novelist ought to ride one of those wagon trains west. You know…give the positive and the negative sides of traveling to the American frontier.”
    Hannah was used to her husband’s way of, sooner or later, turning the conversation to the subject of moving west. She smiled without comment, then looked at the work in her hands and sighed. “That youngest son of yours is twice as hard as Chris ever was on his clothes. It’s a rip here and a tear there. If that boy makes it to adulthood, it’ll be a miracle.”
    Solomon laughed. “Well, honey, B. J.’s just a chip off the old block. I was exactly the same way.”
    She giggled. “And you still haven’t outgrown it. You—”
    “Ah-ah-ah! Just sew up the boy’s pants, and leave me out of it!”
    Hannah rolled her eyes and went back to her work.
    Solomon was engrossed in his book once again when Hannah said, “Sweetheart…”
    “Hmmm?”
    “Did we have a good day at the store? I mean with the wagon train people today?”
    “Sure did. If the season goes as well as it’s starting out, it’s going to be a good one. The first day the wagons started rolling in last year wasn’t nearly as good as today has been. It kept Randy and me hopping like jackrabbits this afternoon. We never did get that freight wagon completely unloaded. In fact, today’s receipts were so good, I had to wire Chicago for more supplies.”
    “The Lord has been so good to us, darling,” Hannah said. “The store has done better this year